Day Five: Boston Indicators Project and Water Treatment

Boston Indicators Project:

This morning, we heard a presentation by Jessica Martin of the Boston Indicators Project. The basic gist is that, for nearly a decade, this group has been collecting data from a wide variety of sources (e.g., the Census Bureau, State Board of Education, tax returns) and creating a massive database that looks at "community indicators." They are tracking this data to focus on how community success can be facilitated in different areas and to facilitate networking between agencies (by looking at broad, sweeping trends that involve multiple aspects of communities). The indicators align with those of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership and the Community Indicators Consortium. (Note: Through those organizations, I was excited to learn that Chicago has a similar program called the Metro Chicago Information Center.)
How did I not even know that this was a field of study?! It makes PERFECT sense, and is exceptionally cool. Their list of indicators includes:

• civic vitality
• cultural life and the arts
• economy
• education
• environment and energy
• health
• housing
• public safety
• technology
• transportation

You may then cross-reference the data in those areas with these filters:

• Boston neighborhoods
• children and youth
• race and ethnicity
• sustainability
• fiscal health
• competitiveness

So, depending on your area of interest, you could cross-reference, for example, public safety with Boston neighborhoods to find out about the relative safety of a specific area. You could also cross-reference environment and energy with fiscal health. This is a very useful tool not only for identifying key issue areas, but also potential partnerships and important data for grants.

This is not an especially easy feat given that many data sets don't match up well; there's a lot of background research that often needs to take place. For example, if you're looking at several data sets involving teen pregnancy and those data sets define "teen pregnancy" differently (e.g., teens are 15-19 in one data set and 13-18 in another), how do you combine the data? This project is really providing a great service by creating vetted data sets, assembled by experts, for people who do NOT specialize in data processing. It's also setting standards for how units/metrics/standards/guidelines for others when they are COLLECTING data so that people can communicate in a more common language.

I asked Jessica flat out how she would like to see us using this data...and she didn't really have a great answer. I mean, I can certainly appreciate the context that the data can provide; it really helps you define your audience and target your programs appropriately. That said, there is not really any cool environmental data being collected. She DID suggest that, if we felt the environmental indicators needed to be beefed up, that we might attend a convening to influence the data that is collected.

Quotable quotes:

"How can you measure quality of life beyond GDP?"

"The Chinese word for crisis shares a character with the word for opportunity."

Key questions:

• What should I do with this information?
  

Fresh Pond Reservation

In the afternoon, we went to the Fresh Pond Reservation. Fresh Pond is the reservoir that holds water before it is treated and provided to the Cambridge area. We were given a tour of the water treatment facility (which is much like Chicago's treatment...alum scum and all), even including the lab where the treated water is tested. The most interesting factoid I heard was that the water treatment facility uses 1/3 of the energy needed by the City of Cambridge. THAT IS INSANE. That number just seems SO extreme to me. Plus, Cambridge only uses 14 million gallons of water per day. Does that mean that Chicago's water treatment, with its 1 BILLION gallons per day, uses 71 times more ENERGY? The energy equivalent of 23 Cambridge's? Or does treatment become more efficient as volume increases? Or did I hear that fact wrong? In any case, I had never considered quite how energy intensive water treatment is. We throw around the fact that "for every 5 minutes you run the tap, that is the equivalent of burning a 60-watt equivalent CFL for 14 hours," but even that doesn't make you realize just how much energy our water uses demands.

I also found our conversations with Dave the Watershed Protection Supervisor quite fascinating. Essentially, his job is to focus on the health and protection of the water BEFORE it is treated. Major threats evidently include pesticides, fertilizer, and oil. I get the impression that he spends a lot of time off-site inspecting things outside of the the reservoir, but he does spend a certain percentage of his time on site, focusing on the management of a park that shouldn't be a park in his opinion. Yes, it is a beautiful open space in the city with shaded walking trails and a massive parking lot, but first and foremost it's Cambridge's fresh water supply, and I can imagine the challenges of that strange co-management scenario. I don't think it's all that uncommon, though. Again, Chicago's water comes from Lake Michigan; I think recreation is the FIRST thing people jump to when it comes to that body of water.

Anyway, I never realized that one could be a Watershed Protection Supervisor; it certainly seems like a super hero-esque job and a lot of responsibility!

Key questions:

• Is Chicago's water treatment more energy efficient than Cambridge's?
  
• Do people who visit the Fresh Pond Reservation realize that their drinking water waits in that pond to be treated? Would additional signage encourage people to use that area more respectfully?