Pipes From The Past

History of Sewers display provides insight and highlights thousands of years of industry evolution.

Interested in Education/Training?

Get Education/Training articles, news and videos right in your inbox! Sign up now.

Education/Training + Get Alerts

With trenchless technologies constantly moving forward, we at NASSCO believe it is equally important to look back on how far we’ve come as an industry. So much has been learned by evaluating the historic aspects of underground construction, and that insight has been critical to our mission to set standards for the assessment and rehabilitation of underground infra-structure, and to assure the continued acceptance and growth of trenchless technologies.

We are pleased to announce that “The Collection Systems Historical Photo and Artifacts Display” — a traveling exhibit related to the history of sewage conveyance systems — will be on display at the Water Environment Federation (WEF) event “Collection Systems 2014: Collection on the Chesapeake” at the Baltimore Convention Center, March 12-13.

Over the past two decades, Jon Schladweiler, the historian for the Arizona Water Association, has researched and collected materials related to sewer history. The extensive collection of materials covers the era from approximately 3500 BC through the 1930s. The purpose of the exhibit is to share the dynamic collection of materials that illustrate the evolutionary development of sewers over the past 5,500 years.

The exhibit, which was first introduced at a WEF collections conference 21 years ago, comes full circle as it will be displayed at the upcoming event in March. As an illustration of how industry associations and organizations come together for the education and promotion of the sewer industry, the Chesapeake Water Environment Association (CWEA) has graciously sponsored the $5,000 transportation cost to move the large exhibit to Baltimore.

After the WEF event, the exhibit will be shipped to Arizona for one last display at Arizona Water’s annual conference on May 7-9, 2014, at the Glendale Hotel and Spa in Glendale, Ariz.  In October 2014, the exhibits will be shipped to WEFTEC in New Orleans, and after that, they’ll become the property of NASSCO.

The historic collection will reside at our headquarters in the Baltimore area. NASSCO will continue to display this exhibit at WEFTEC and the Underground Construction Technology (UCT) conferences, and our location will also provide access to the display for the large population of industry professionals on the East Coast. In an effort to further educate our industry, we welcome the donation of additional historic photos, sketches, articles, books or other sources of historical information on the history of sewers.

Ted DeBoda is executive director of NASSCO. He can be reached at director@nassco.org



Discussion

Comments on this site are submitted by users and are not endorsed by nor do they reflect the views or opinions of COLE Publishing, Inc. Comments are moderated before being posted.