Environmental Conservation Projects

Water Conservation Projects

Today the need for ocean conservation is important to our survival of communities that rely on the water tributaries and the ocean for economic support. International Funding Group Trust is committed to developing conservation program that address the growing concern of pollution and over fishing. We understand countries and communities around the world rely on water tributaries and the ocean to provide sustenance. However through over fishing and pollution the fragile eco systems that we reply on are being threatened at an alarming rate.

Water conservation must begin with addressing mans waste on land as well as the cleanup processes available and aquatic life repopulation.

Our project goal is to:

		Working with environmental agencies and local governments in establishing a comprehensive environmental impact studies and analysis of off shore environments, all water tributaries, lakes, and shorelines in the targeted countries.
		Understand the declining conditions attributed to increasing stress on aquatic life due to mismanagement of local fishing industries, commercial, industrial and community waste pollution.
		Develop local government assistance programs to educate countries on modern and alternative ocean conservation
		Assist local governments in developing sound and environmentally aware aquatic environmental programs that address specific problems with saving their natural resources.

Project Development

The hiring and training of local conservation teams to oversee and develop the program. Setup a local environmental testing lab that will work with local and international environmental agencies to test all water tributaries and off shore environments for harmful pollutants. Test community and industrial run off and dump sites for large-scale pollution. Assist local governments in obtaining the proper equipment needed to fight environmental threats. This will consist of, but not limited to advanced and modern equipment to fight large-scale oil and chemical spills. Identify aquatic life that may be an economic staple to the local communities. Develop a fisheries program that can replenish and supplement the current fisheries market to secure economic growth and a balance in the local aquatic environment. Construct local fish archeries to ensure a balance and that the varieties of commercial fish are not threaten. Construct modern waste management facilities that are environmentally safe to improve pollution control and bio-waste contamination. Construct advanced hazardous chemical and toxic waste management facilities to handle commercial and industrial waste by products. Apply new advanced and environmentally safe technologies to address pollution problems that are impacting our delicate eco systems

Wet Waste and Sewage Treatment Plants

Sewage and waste is one of the primary environmental threats around the world. That is why environmental projects must include waste management projects. A wet waste and sewage treatment plant that supports a community of about 100,000 persons can exceed $60 million dollars for the project Cost. This type of treatment plant can handle up to 25 mgd (million gallons a day), but generally would operate at between 11 and 12 mgd.

To the right is a photo of a large-scale 95-acre treatment plant. This plant treats wastewater for an estimated 1.4 million people; it treats millions of gallons of wastewater from local homes, businesses, and industries, which can exceed $420 million dollars for the project cost. The average capacity would be about 115 million gallons per day. The effluent (treated wastewater leaving the plant) pumps would handle a maximum of 325 million gallons per day.

Wastewater coming into the plant undergoes a series of processes, including the following:

• Preliminary treatment: where large sticks, rocks and rags are removed
• Primary Treatment: skimming and settling that removes about 60 percent of the solids and pollutants Secondary treatment: biological treatment that consumes and removes more than 90 percent of the pollutants

Disinfections: then pumped through a long effluent pipe and released

• "Recycle, Reclaim, and Reuse,” describes the activities a plant should take. Besides treating wastewater - producing a high quality effluent - the plant produces the following:
• Biosolids, highly treated, nutrient-rich solids that are used in agriculture and forestry
• Reclaimed water used on-site for various processes and also used off-site for irrigation, industrial heating and cooling, and other hydraulic systems

Biosolids - Soil Improvement Project

Enhanced germination and early growth improves winter survival of young plants. Thick canopy cover restricts weed establishment and helps reduce moisture loss from the soil. As a result, farmers have reduced the use of herbicides and water is conserved for plants.

Civil Waste Management Project

International Funding Group Trust is dedicated to partnering with companies that are developing new technologies that are economic, efficient and environmentally safe. The Advance Pyrolysis is one of the technologies being development today that is highly efficient and economic.

The Pyrolysis has been known for hundreds of years. The advantage of pyrolysis, unlike incineration, is the destructive decomposition of waste materials using indirect heat in the absence of oxygen. Burning wastes through incineration with direct flame in the presence of oxygen can be explosive, causing turbulence in the burn-chamber, which fosters a recombination of the released gases. Waste destruction in an oxygen rich atmosphere, is highly inefficient and creates harmful substances. Pyrolysis could be the solution, which makes waste management for the century possible today.

The process applies high temperatures (from 1,200 degrees F to 1,800 degrees F0 indirectly to a retort chamber, which houses and environment free of flame and oxygen. Inside, hydrocarbons and other waste components are converted into gases and basis elemental solids via destructive distillation and molecular decomposition. All of the off-gases are diverted to a thermal oxidizer operating at 2,250 degrees F for conversion to carbon dioxide, oxygen and water vapor. The remaining solid residues passing out of the retort are typically carbon, sterile sands and fixed, non-leach able metals.

Pyrolytic Thermal Converter Systems are designed for processing a variety of waste materials including industrial hazardous, non-hazardous solid, medical, PCBs, petrochemical, and many other waste by products efficiently, reliably, continuous and safely. This type of system is environmentally sound, have outstanding energy efficiency and portability, and they provide up to 92% volume reduced of many feed materials. Specialized processing lines have been engineered to treat industrial wastes, PCBs, medical wastes, petrochemical waste, municipal solid wastes and a variety of other waste materials.

This system can be fitted with special modules that permit the extraction of water from product waste to turn steam turbines to generate additional electricity for a community. We cannot stress enough how vital it is to protect our fragile environment by cleaning up the amount of waste matter, biohazards and sewage being dumped at alarming rates all over the world. Environmental programs must dealing with mans toxic and non-toxic waste problems.

Emergency Relief for the Bangladesh’s Arsenic Disaster

Source of Arsenic

The arsenic probably originates in the Himalayan headwaters of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, and has lain undisturbed beneath the surface of the region’s deltas for thousands of years in thick layers of fine alluvial mud smeared across the area by the rivers.

According to David Kinniburgh of the British Geological Survey, who has recently completed a detailed study of the arsenic’s route into millions of tube wells, the arsenic concentration in the mud is not extraordinary. Time is the culprit. The mud in Bangladesh lies thicker, wider and flatter than almost anywhere on Earth. It can take hundreds or thousands of years for underground water to percolate through the mud before reaching the sea. All the while it is absorbing arsenic.

This, says Kinniburgh, helps explain the diverse pattern of arsenic concentrations in tube well waters. The contaminated wells almost all take water from a depth of 20 to 100 metres. Shallower wells are clean because they contain mostly recent rainwater or water flowing swiftly through the sediments. Deeper wells tap water in older sediments, which have by now been flushed clean of arsenic. It will take thousands of years, says Kinniburgh, before the rest of the arsenic will wash away into the Indian Ocean.

Many underground water sources around the world contain arsenic. Parts of Taiwan, Argentina, Chile and China have all suffered epidemics of skin diseases, gangrene and cancer as a result. Smith’s analysis of the Taiwan epidemic in particular helped set the WHO arsenic standards for water and is the basis for his current predictions. Bangladesh, he says, is quite unprecedented.

UNICEF Explanation

UNICEF explains today that “at the time, standard procedures for testing the safety of groundwater did not include tests for arsenic [which] had never before been found in the kind of geological formations that exist in Bangladesh.” But many geochemists, such as John McArthur at University College London, scoff at such a suggestion. They blame dogma among public health people with no knowledge of geology, and who equated underground water with safe water.

World Bank Approach

The World Bank announced an emergency three-year program to identify the killer tube wells using simple tests and to “put in motion concrete actions [to] combat a major health crisis with devastating effects on the lives of millions.” With almost every one of the country’s 68,000 villages potentially at risk, the Bank said it would initially survey 4,000 villages and draw up action plans for each. This “fast-track project” was to be the first phase in a 15-year program to screen the country’s tube wells.

Project Stalled

Richard Wilson, a leading analyst of the crisis from Harvard University’s department of public health, says, “The project is stalled.” He blames the Bangladeshi government’s failure to “decide how to spend the money” and says that leading officers at the Bank are privately “most upset about it.”

Task too Big for NGO

But the task is far too big for any NGO. Shahida Azfar, UNICEF’s representative in Dhaka, told a conference in the city last May that “to date, only 250,000 tube wells have been tested. If we keep this up it will take us 30 years to complete the testing.”

No Proven Method

And few if any action plans have been completed because, says Minnatullah, scientists have failed to find a “proven, affordable” method of removing arsenic from village pumps.

Where is Situation the Worst?

Where is the situation worst? Chakraborti says “one of the worst villages I have ever visited” is Stadium Para in Meherpur district, right on the border with India. Here nine residents have already died of cancerous ulcers caused by arsenic. One was only 25 years old. But, after five years of surveying, he nominates the southeastern village of Seladi as “in all probability the most arsenic-contaminated village in the world.” Here 72 out of 73 tube wells are contaminated. No fewer than 21 contain arsenic at more than 1,000 parts per billion, and the highest at 4,000 ppb, or four hundred times the WHO limit.

Lack of Education a Problem

There are some technical solutions to providing safe drinking water for the people of Bangladesh–albeit hard to execute in such a poor, ill-educated and rural countryside (see box). But first the millions of dangerous tube wells have to be identified. The slow progress of the World Bank program so far could prove a mortal blow. In his September report, Smith warned that “the worst thing that can possibly be done is nothing.” But for most Bangladeshis caught up in this disaster, nothing is exactly what is being done.

What Next?

In the first step of the mammoth task of testing the country’s tube wells, volunteers, aid workers and officials paint the dangerous ones red, which should only be used for washing. The villagers are supposed to use the safe wells exclusively for drinking, but that’s not easy when the lucky one is found in someone else’s backyard.

In the longer run, part of the answer lies in sinking deeper wells to tap cleaner water. But it will take millions of dollars to install these wells in addition to the needed surface tanks and distribution pipes. Also some deep tube wells in West Bengal have started bringing up arsenic months or years after they were opened.

Another idea is to adopt traditional methods such as ponds and tanks to “harvest” rainwater. This will work in some places, says Shahida Azfar from UNICEF, but “there is not enough rain all year for that to be feasible as the main strategy.”

Could the tube well waters be treated? While a large number of ideas for filters and chemical treatments have been tried out in the past two years, there is “no proven affordable arsenic removal technology available yet,” according to Khawaja Minnatullah of the World Bank. Most experts warn against blanket solutions. Each village needs its own plan. And none of them can begin planning until it knows which of its tube wells are pouring poison into villagers’ buckets.