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Home > Events
EVENTS
CRWA 2008 Annual Meeting & Awards Dinner
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| Photo by Mark Garfinkel © Boston Herald |
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
at the Newton Marriott Hotel
2345 Commonwealth Avenue,
Newton, MA
5:30pm Business Meeting
6:00pm Cocktails
Followed by a buffet dinner, awards presentation, and keynote speaker
Join us to honor awardees who have helped restore the river, and celebrate our accomplishments at the local and regional levels in science, policy and urban restoration The evening’s featured speaker will be Dr. Sarah Slaughter, coordinator of the MIT Sloan School of Management Sustainability Business Laboratory and the Sloan Sustainability Initiative, who will present on Designing Sustainable and Resilient Communities. Dr. Slaughter will discuss how innovations in engineering can change the way cities conserve vital water resources and withstand disasters.
who will give insight into how engineering innovations can change the way cities conserve vital water resources and withstand disasters. Click here to view a PDF version of the invitation.
This year's CRWA award recipients:
Anne M. Blackburn Award – Robert Varney, Regional Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency
Rita Barron Public Official Award – Representative Frank Smizik
CRWA Citizen Activist – Larry Smith, Charles River Canoe and Kayak
CRWA Volunteer – Susan Redlich
Clean Charles Award – John Thomas, Beals & Thomas
Special Recognition Award – Jim Healy & Boston Duck Tours
Tickets:
Annual Meeting tickets are $40 per person for CRWA volunteers, $65 per person for CRWA members, and $75 per person for non-members. Premier tickets are available for $150 each. (An additional $10 per ticket will be charged if tickets are purchased at the door.)
You
may purchase tickets online through Paypal
using the button below. If you have difficulty with Paypal or
would prefer to purchase tickets directly from CRWA, please contact Leigh Heffernan. Click here for contact information. Please note: Because we are linked to Paypal, you may receive a warning that this could be a phishing website. Disregard this message; when you click on the 'buy now' button, you will be redirected to Paypal's secure website.
Our featured speaker: Dr. Sarah Slaughter of MIT
 Dr. Sarah Slaughter, a civil engineer with a doctorate in management, combines these disciplines to focus on the disaster resiliency in infrastructure and the built environment. Slaughter currently coordinates the Sustainable Business Laboratory (S-Lab) and the Sloan Sustainability Initiative where she is exploring strategies to reduce organizational risk and improve performance. She is a leader in the field of strategic management of capital facility assets, and in innovations in the built environment. She is currently on the Board of Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment in the National Research Council, National Academies of Science, and Vice Chair of the NRC Committee on Sustainable Infrastructure. She is also a member of the Board of Directors for the Civil Engineering Forum for Innovation, American Society of Civil Engineers and the editorial boards of several publications. Dr. Slaughter received her B.S., M.S., and PhD degrees from MIT.
In May, Dr. Slaughter published a paper entitled “Water Looms as ‘the Next Oil”, where she describes the coming difficulties as we face dwindling supplies and growing demand for an even more basic and essential natural commodity - water. Click here to read the article. Because many cities are facing dwindling water supplies, severe flood damage, and unstable water tables, Dr. Slaughter’s comments on innovations that are changing the way cities of the future will be engineered are particularly timely. Her international perspective reinforces the leadership that CRWA has taken in promoting new technologies that revive urban centers with better water resource management.
Below is an excerpt from an article entitled Building it Better: Making Our Infrastructure Sustainable and Disaster Resilient, published by Dr. Slaughter in November 2007 (available in full at http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/2007-slaughter.php):
“From bridge collapses to severe droughts in the Southeast, politicians and citizens alike are suddenly focused on the precarious condition of the nation's infrastructure after decades of neglect. We often don't realize our dependence upon these “invisible systems” until our water, sanitary, solid waste, transportation, telecommunications or power systems don't work — and then we scramble to patch them up as quickly as possible to get back to normal.
Rather than merely replacing broken parts, we should instead seize opportunities to put in place an infrastructure that explicitly addresses the sustainability objectives of environmental restoration, economic development, and social equity. By investing in the future rather than returning to business as usual, we can improve the ability of these systems to recover after natural disasters while increasing the country's long term profits and job opportunities.”
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