Published Author Category Events, RTP180, The Frontier

In keeping with the theme of last week (A.K.A. “it rained a lot,”) we hosted our August installment of RTP180 on Water on Thursday. This month, we decided to shake things up. Over the past year, we have gotten feedback that our audience wouldn’t mind hearing the speakers for longer than just five minutes. We love trying new things, so rather than having five speakers talk for five minutes, we gave four speakers each six minutes. Let us know what you thought!

First up was Fekadu Moreda from RTI International. The main takeaway from his six minutes: water is life. Think about it – water makes up your body, and most of our daily activities. And without water, we wouldn’t be able to host RTP180 each month, because two very important components would be missing: the restrooms and the beer! Fekadu also stated that “Water is the backbone to our economy.” Want to know how? Listen to his talk here to learn more.

David DeMarini took the stage next representing the Environmental Protection Agency, located just down the road in RTP! He taught us about chlorinated water and why he thought it was the greatest achievement in public health. His team studies the correlation between water, swimming and cancer. Learn about their findings over the past 40 years here.

Margaret Sands from the Triangle Land Conservancy was able to look at water from a land conservation lens.  Ultimately, land conservation is intertwined with water conservation because it is the cheapest and most effective way to do it. Margaret was able to show us exactly where in the Triangle our drinking water comes from, broken down by city and county, and gave us tips on how we can help conservation efforts. Pay your water bill, folks. Watch her talk here.

Our last speaker was Frontier 800’s own Brad Elkins of EOS Remediation, giving us a geologist’s perspective on water. Groundwater is 30% of the freshwater supply on Earth, so clearly, we need to protect it. In comes bioremediation, which is use naturally occurring bacteria in the ground and soybean oil. To learn about the process (and see a really cute organism in a bowtie), check out his talk here.

Like RTP180? Can’t attend in person? Keep in mind that we always stream our events on unctv.org each month. Next month’s topic is Medial Devices and you can snag your ticket now.