Environmental Symposium

This is a summary describing my attendance at the Environmental symposium held at Virginia Military Institute from 28 April to 1 May.

I can say I represented my corporation well, I have delivered a presentation side by side with PhD technical experts in the field of Environmental Engineering and my paper was both more informative and better received than many others. I heard a number of great new ideas concerning conservation and distribution of water, met many of the key players in the field, heard several great presentations, and enjoyed three days of gorgeous weather, one really nice thunderstorm, and absolutely beautiful countryside surrounding Lexington, Virginia. all my food was free, my symposium fees waivered in exchange for my presentation on an Environmentally Friendly Weapon of War. Overall it was an enjoyable time.

Will I attended this conference next year? Perhaps, but if I do and if I present a paper it will not be to a small group of 20 people, but hopefully to the plenary group of 600 so they can see what it does to a person in the field who is trying to get a job done when they enact hundreds of little bits of legislation.

One thing that was very impressive was the presentation by Amy Vickers, concerning conservation, reclamation, and reuse of fresh water. As a public speaker, she is dynamite. She is animated, very articulate, and extremely logical and easy to follow. Her technical expertise is exceptional. I'm also heard a number of radically new ideas from her concerning ways of saving rain water, constructing new buildings so that they can conserve and collect freshwater, separate the plumbing systems in order to re-use of gray water, and even sell off excess Rainwater's collected.

As we prepare to build a new 400,000 square foot facility for the production of a thousand AAAV’s, they discussed the number of millions of gallons of fresh water that could be collected from annual rainfall just from runoff from the roof. This water can be used in a number of applications including washing our vehicle, certainly any of the floor washing and Standard wash down the work areas , and even for portions of the plumbing and gardening. The excess can be sold, or traded to other industrial concerns, in exchange for air permit expansions or other environmental needs under the law.

So overall the three day meeting was a success, it was not a waste of our time, and my 20 minute presentation was a small fee to pay in exchange for networking with the state legislators and lawmakers, becoming visible to the environmentalist community, and demonstrating the willingness of General Dynamics to participate with the state of Virginia in creating the clean-air safer future for us all.

Joseph R. Finch