| MWRF | Minnesota Water Research Fund Minnesota Water Research Fund: Students Matter

Author: Tricia Christensen is a MWRF Advisory Committee member. She has spent her 20-plus-year career in water and is currently the Upper Midwest Planning and Asset Management Lead at Black & Veatch. She can be contacted at christensenp@bv.com

Thank You To Mwrf Partners

Gold Partners

Bernie Bullert

SL-serco

Silver Partners

American Waterworks Association-MN Section

TKDA

Bronze Partners

M.E. Simpson Co., Inc.

Stantec

Tenon Systems

WSB

Mwrf Advisory Committee

Bernie Bullert (Chair)

BCE 1968, MBA 1977, UMN SL-serco

Michelle Stockness (Vice Chair)

BSCiE 2001, Univ. of Missouri-Columbia Barr Engineering

David Allen

BA Mass Comm. 1993, UMN SL-serco

Lisa Cerney

BCE 1999, UMN Hennepin County

Tricia Christensen

BSCE 2001, South Dakota State Univ.

Black & Veatch

Bo Johnston

MSCE 2005, UMN

Black & Veatch

Andrew Ohrt

MSCE 2005, UMN West Yost

Naeem Qureshi

MSCE 1985, UMN

Sambatek

Karl Streed

BCE 1972, UMN

Stew Thornley

BS Bus. Administration 1981, UMN

MN Department of Health

Shannon Wolkerstorfer

UMN External Relations

The third installment in the four-part Minnesota Water Research Fund (MWRF) series focuses on students and the impact of research.

Every spring, MWRF Advisory Committee Members meet to review funding proposals from University of Minnesota faculty and students. For committee members, it is the best time of the year. We get to see MWRF’s mission in action by funding real world research and supporting students.

MWRF currently makes annual distributions in the range of $5,000 –$10,000. The Advisory Committee aims to support emerging research and provide seed funding for projects that do not yet have other funding sources. Many of the projects address problems unique to Minnesota’s rural areas. The funding positively impacts multiple UMN professors, graduate students, and undergraduate students who work on the research projects.

Students Matter

Students are the next generation of water industry leaders. The MWRF annual distributions support student education and hands on learning. The opportunity for students to learn through research helps clarify their choice of degree program, career interests, and post graduate plans. Research strengthens written and oral communication, critical thinking, technical skills, and information literacy. These are all things that enrich the student’s experience. The water industry needs engaged, innovative thinkers to be working on the world’s water challenges.

Funding research also supports the development of mentoring relationships. Mentors help students expand their networks, navigate new experiences, boost confidence and can potentially open new opportunities. The close relationships that are developed through sustained research work give participants a sense of community and can help some students find their niche on campus.

Research is vital to ensuring adequate supplies of clean water to protect life and livelihood, safeguard and restore watershed and ecosystems, and strengthen the economy. It is also fundamental to the success of universities. As universities become known for research in certain fields they become magnets for students, faculty, grants, media coverage and philanthropy. This impacts everything from student recruitment and faculty retention, to attracting new investments. Students matter, Minnesota matters, and water matters, the MWRF is having an impact on all three.

Mwrf Impact

Each year the MWRF recommends two projects for funding. The projects vary in the types of research being conducted, but always support the MWRF mission of innovative research to improve water treatment technologies and water quality in the environment. Funding highlights from the last three years are presented below.

2020

In 2020, ‘Optimization of Water Quality Monitoring in Streams’ led by Adjunct Associate Professor Paul Capel with undergraduate students Aldo Bazan, Malik Khadar, Sam Maijala, and Abdimohsin Sahidm was selected for funding. Monitoring streams and rivers for water quality is expensive but critically important. Monitoring data is necessary for informed decision making by water resource managers. This project applied machine learning methods to existing high frequency water quality and streamflow data from a variety of streams to quantify the degree of accuracy of commonly used monitoring strategies. Suggested targeted strategies were made based on stream characteristics. The outcome of this work helps the numerous agencies that conduct water quality monitoring improve the accuracy of their data.

2021

Judy Yang and graduate student

Shih Hsun Huang were selected for ‘Impacts of Vegetation on Surface Water/Groundwater Interactions.’ Preserving the health of streams is vital to ensure safe drinking water and fishery products, yet many streams are degraded and contaminated. Projects to restore streams cost over a billion dollars per year in the US, however the environmental impacts of many restoration strategies, such as replant vegetation, have not been fully understood. Vegetation can induce hyporheic exchange which is exchange of water, solutes, and particles between surface water and underlying sediment and groundwater. As a result, revegetation projects could potentially cause an increase in release of contaminants from sediment and groundwater into the surface water and vice versa. Quantitative understanding of hyporheic exchange due to vegetation is currently lacking. This research project took place in the Environmental Transport lab led by Professor Judy Yang.

Transparent sediment (hydrogel beads) and translucent vegetation (acrylic rods) are combined with fluorescent dye to study how vegetation enhances the exchange of water, solutes, and particles between surface water and sediment/ groundwater. This work helps ecologists design better stream restoration projects that ensure safe drinking water and fishery products.

In 2021 the MWRF also funded the purchase of four ISCO automated water sampling devices for CEGE faculty and students to use when doing water research and in the process of teaching students. Projects utilizing this equipment include stormwater quality and treatment, drinking water treatment, wastewater treatment, and surface water quality assessment. Having experience with the ISCO automated water sampling devices is beneficial for students when they seek employment within the industry.

2022

Professor Emeritus John Gulliver with Ph.D. candidate Vinicius Taguchi were selected to study ‘Phosphorus Retention in Stormwater Ponds.’ Minnesota has over thirty thousand stormwater retention ponds that treat and control stormwater runoff. However, there is increasing evidence that ponds may no longer be proving the water quality benefits they were originally designed to deliver. Results from this study will be used to maintain older ponds and to apply design retrofits to existing and new ponds to improve stormwater pond performance and benefits.

The year 2022 wouldn’t be complete without a little COVID-19 research!

Professor William Arnold, along with student researchers, were selected to study ‘Quaternary Ammonium

MWRF Goals:

• Annually fundraise and fund top-quality water research at UMN

• Achieve an endowed chair status for the fund by 2030 (a $2 million goal)

• Develop and support research ideas and priorities in any aspect of water in Minnesota, including climate change’s effects on MN water resources.

Compounds in Minnesota Waters –Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic.’

Because of recommendations regarding surface disinfection made during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the sales of quaternary ammonium compound (QAC) disinfectants increased dramatically. The vast majority of QACs are discharged to municipal sewers upon use, and thus these compounds wind up in wastewater treatment plants and surface waters. This project collected water and sediment samples downstream of wastewater outfalls to assess the presence and persistence of QACs in Minnesota rivers. This information is useful for the assessment of potential QAC impacts and the development of passive treatment systems, such as treatment wetlands for the removal of QACs.

These and other important research projects have been supported by the MWRF since 2017. Visit cse.umn.edu/ cege/mwrf-project-summaries to learn more about the research projects funded by MWRF.

Funding

The University of Minnesota provides students with the opportunities of a world-class research university while remaining affordable. Financial support is an integral part of this cycle and funds like the MWRF are vitally important. The MWRF can’t support students without funding. Please consider joining our growing list of organizations, private companies, and individuals supporting MWRF. Partnership opportunities are available, contact Bernie Bullert (bernie.bullert@sl-serco.com) for more information or refer to online form umn.edu/Sponsor

MNWaterResearch to indicate your partnership support. Your support of the MWRF drives discovery!

The Summer Breeze will contain the last installment in the four-part MWRF series. The article will focus on getting involved in the MWRF. Our volunteers and partners drive our success! More information about the MWRF can be found online at minnesota-water-research-fund