Duncan 1

Steve Duncan
HIST 263 - Prof. Burgess
11/30/09

The Sewer History Archive at the Water Environment Foundation

Alexandria, VA, at the Water Environment Foundation Headquarters

Contents:

1. Background.............................................................................................................. 2
Jon Schladweiler:.......................................................................................................... 2
The EPA:..................................................................................................................... 2
The WEF:.................................................................................................................... 2
2. Fictional background for the origin of the Sewer History Archive (SHA):.................... 3
3. Mission Statement.................................................................................................... 4
4. Authority, Legal Status, Organizational Placement ..................................................... 5
5. Collection Policy ...................................................................................................... 6
6. Volunteers................................................................................................................ 7
7. Access and Revenue .................................................................................................. 8
Access for Historic Materials Collection:........................................................................ 8
Access for WEF Institutional Archive Materials and corporate/construction records: ....... 9
8. Public Outreach ....................................................................................................... 9
9. Budget Summary for First Three Years: ................................................................... 10
 Duncan 2

1. Background
(N.B. – the information presented here in the Background section is true. All the rest, while
resting on a foundation of truth, is made up.)

Jon Schladweiler:

The Arizona Water Association (AZWA) is one of the member organizations of the
Water Environment Federation (WEF). Jon Schladweiler is the historian of the AZWA, and
since the 1990s he has been collecting materials relating to sewerage history, many of which
he has made available on the website www.sewerhistory.org. These materials cover “the era
from approximately 3500 BCE through the 1930s CE.”1 The materials are his personal
collection; some of them are also organized into a traveling exhibition shown at seminars and
conferences throughout the country, and the exhibit itself is owned by the non-profit
AZWA. As the AZWA is part of the WEF, this means that the WEF already has some
association with these materials. In my hypothetical archive, Jon Schladweiler’s donation of
his collection forms the original basis of the Sewer History Archive.

The EPA:

As of 2009, the EPA is planning on dispensing various grants from $5,000 to

$200,000 “for a total of $3.4 million in funding for environmental education projects and
programs.”2 In my hypothetical archive, the EPA provides a significant part of the annual
operating costs through a multi-year grant commitment.

The WEF:

The Water Environment Federation (WEF) is a non-profit educational and technical

organization that is composed of approximately 75 member organizations, for a total of
about 35,000 individual members. These member organizations are mostly localized
professional organizations; for example, the Virginia Water Environment Association, Inc.,
or the Arizona Water Association. There are also six “Professional Wastewater Division
Operator Associations,” essentially trade associations. These member associations include
both non-profit organizations as well as incorporated organizations; each association is an
independent entity and has its own structure.
The history of the WEF’s names show its focus on sewerage. From the website
(www.wef.org):
WEF has guided technological development in water quality since 1928.
Previously called the Federation of Sewage Works Associations (1928), the
Federation of Sewage and Industrial Wastes Associations (1950), and the
Water Pollution Control Federation (1960); the name was changed to the
Water Environment Federation in 1991…

1
http://www.sewerhistory.org/indexc.htm
2
“WEF Spotlight: This Week In Washington” at http://www.wef.org/, November 24 2009.
 Duncan 3

There are currently about 100 employees of the WEF, which is based in Alexandria,
VA. The member associations are international, and are in many European and Asian
countries as well as the US. (For the purposes of my Sewer History Archive, the only real
inadequacy of the WEF is that it has only one member association in the UK, and none in
France; this is too bad because the Sewer Archive does need to have extensive material
relevant to both the London and Paris sewer systems.)
Including foreign-language versions, the WEF currently publishes about 190
journals, technical publications, trade newsletters, Manuals of Practice, and other
publications. They maintain a library of these resources, along with the many professional
and academic papers that have been presented at its conferences, and “Knowledge Center”
databases and discussion forums on various water quality issues. They also develop policy
papers and work with government agencies to develop best practices. In short, the WEF
already has a extensive infrastructure and personnel for archiving, storing, and analyzing
data.
For my imaginary Sewer History Archive, I propose that it is attached to the WEF.
The objectives and mission of the Sewer History Archive represent only one part of the
broader objectives of the WEF, and so it should have existence as a separate department;
however, it will be able to use the database systems, user access software, data backup
systems, etc that already exist within the WEF.

2. Fictional background for the origin of the Sewer History Archive (SHA):

Sewer historian Jon Schladweiler, after a very minor stroke in his late 60s, decided to
try to find a new home for the collection of historical resources on sewers and sewerage that
he had collected over multiple decades. He contacted his friend John Smith3, Managing
Editor of the World Water magazine published by the WEF—the “premier international
magazine for the water quality industry,” which has been published since 1982.
Together, they approached the members of the board of the WEF. This board, as set
up in section 3 of the Constitution and Bylaws of the WEF, is composed of 12 board
members from member associations as well as five officers of the WEF—President, Vice-
President, Secretary, etc. This Board has complete fiduciary and legal authority for the WEF;
the WEF’s “House of Delegates” from member associations has primarily an advisory role,
though they also have the power to elect Board members. In 2008, Jon Schladweiler and
John Smith convinced the board to develop the program of the Sewer History Archive,
which corresponds to the objectives of the WEF to develop information and educational
resources in the field of wastewater management. The program would officially start in 2010,
which would also be the date of Jon’s donation of his collection.
The board, however, did not simply accept Jon Schladweiler’s collection in order to
develop the same sort of archive that Jon had suggested. Instead, they took advantage of the
opportunity to make the SHA into an institutional archive as well, in order to handle the
huge number of articles and resources from the WEF’s publications, conferences, and
educational programs.

3
Not his real name.
 Duncan 4

After much discussion the program was set up to everyone’s satisfaction. Jon’s desire
to have the historic materials publicly available were codified in the administrative creation
of the SHA program, and the WEF contractually committed to protecting these interests in
exchange for the donation of Jon’s collection. The WEF would supply the financial coverage
and technical/administrative support needed to run the institutional-archive component of
the SHA, and would also contribute enough to cover the most basic costs associated with the
SHA’s historic mission—basically, enough to cover the costs of preserving the collection, but
not enough to expand it at all. The SHA would look for contributions and grant money to
supplement this, and to allow it to grow and to undertake public-outreach projects.
The WEF’s grant-writer then worked with Jon and John to apply for grants from the
EPA and other potential funding sources. A recent surge in awareness of the importance of
infrastructure was the social context of the time, and within the EPA there was a widespread
recognition that in the upcoming decades it will be necessary to commit massive investment
to the rebuilding and repair of much of the antiquated and decrepit utility infrastructure that
exists in many American cities. The EPA therefore was very interested in programs that could
expand public awareness of things like wastewater systems, so as to help develop a popular
understanding of why exactly it was worthwhile to invest so much in reconstructing these
hidden and oft-overlooked systems. Recognizing that the Sewer History Archive could be
very effective in helping to expand the public awareness, the EPA committed to a very
unusual grant of $200,000 annually for three years—2010, 2011, and 2012—with a further
agreement that, contingent on a review of the progress of the archive had made during that
time, the three-year, $600,000 grant would be renewed.
This grant helped make the archive development possible, and also served to push
the mission of the archive toward public education programs, as reflected in the mission
statement. (Without this EPA grant, the SHA would have, sadly, probably been more of just
an institutional archive rather than anything else.)

3. Mission Statement

The Sewer History Archive at the Water Environment Federation seeks to compile
and organize information, documents, and artifacts related to sewerage history and sewer
construction worldwide, as well as articles, records, or other contemporary work that will aid
in understanding the past, present, and future of wastewater management and the
improvement of our water environment worldwide. The Sewer History Archive will also seek
to contribute to public outreach and educational programs or exhibits, with the goal of
expanding public understanding and awareness of wastewater management and sewer
infrastructure. The Sewer History Archive will be a valuable information resource for
researchers and professionals in the field wastewater management, as well as a powerful tool
in the struggle to expand public knowledge of this vital part of the built environment.

The mission of the Sewer Archive is contributory to the overall mission of the Water
Environment Federation: to preserve and enhance the global water environment by
developing educational programs, providing technical expertise and training, and
 Duncan 5

contributing to the development of knowledge and understanding of wastewater collection,

treatment, reuse, and operations.

4. Authority, Legal Status, Organizational Placement

Jon and John set out to develop the Sewer History Archive as a program of the WEF
rather than as a separate entity for a variety of reasons, most importantly access to funding
and to physical and personnel resources. The WEF also provides a ready link with a primary
audience for the SHA—wastewater professionals and researchers—as well as solid links with
a volunteer base (the members of the WEF, about 2,500 of whom already volunteer in
committees and projects of the WEF). It also provides links with potential donors: the large
national and international contractors that have been responsible for major sewerage and
infrastructure projects through most of the 20th century.
As a program of the WEF, SHA is governed by the same constitution and bylaws
that govern the WEF. (The WEF itself is incorporated as a non-profit membership
association in the state of Virginia.)
For the WEF, one advantage of developing the SHA program was that it provided a
way to archive its own institutionally-produced materials more easily and comprehensively.
Before the SHA, the WEF published its various magazines and journals, and the editorial
staff of each publication was responsible for organizing and archiving the articles for each.
Similarly, each conference organizational staff was responsible for archiving the talks and
papers presented at the conference. Integrating these materials took place through
information technologists within the IT department, which compiled databases through
which members of WEF (but not the general public) could access the materials. A small, un-
staffed library contained old issues of all the publications as well as any preserved research
materials from projects undertaken by editorial staff or by other WEF researchers.
Developing a distinct archive, under the name of the Sewer History Archive, allowed
the WEF to put all of this into one place. This would make it easier for WEF researchers and
professionals. Integrating the archives like this also paved the way to open it up as an
academic resource for outside agencies. The WEF knew that many educational institutions,
consultant and research groups, and especially large contractors would pay substantially to
have access to this sort of centralized information resource, and this would help pay the costs
of the archive.
The SHA archivists, therefore, would have two simultaneous missions: 1) to serve the
professional membership of the WEF, by compiling a valuable information resource that
could be sold; and 2) to serve the wider long-term interests of the industry as a whole by
educating the public and preserving historically significant materials.
Partly in order to protect the archivist from being pushed too hard by the need to
serve the immediate goals of the WEF, the Sewer History Archive was set up with a semi-
autonomous budget, inasmuch as the small budget provided by the WEF is expected to be
supplemented with grants from government or private agencies; charitable foundations;
and/or sponsorship from outside companies.
The permanent contribution of the WEF to the archive will be:
 To pay the salary and benefits of the archivist hired to manage and develop the SHA
 Duncan 6

 To pay the salary of a grant-writer, or to give the SHA access to WEF’s extant grant-
writing staff.
 To pay the salary and benefits of an information technologist/IT professional,
presumably taken from the WEF’s IT department, to work closely with the archivist
on developing the software needed to support the digital presentation of the archival
materials. Overall the archive has a strong focus on digitized material, as this allows
wider and easier access.
 To provide working and storage space for the archive. This will be approximately
900 square feet of space, with provisions for up to about the same amount of space in
off-site storage. This space is within the main WEF building, which complies with all
the local building safety codes, but has a wet sprinkler system and no reliable
humidity control. This is in addition to the extant un-staffed “library” of the WEF,
containing back issues of its publications, books, conference materials, etc.
 Within the SHA space, a small storage room will be built as a contained unit within
the space, with additional flood protection, humidity controls, and a Halon 1301 fire
suppression system. A normal-looking fire door separates the storage space from the
main office. This space is specifically for manuscripts and historic books or
documents in need of preservation.
 To provide the hardware and technical resources needed to handle the digitized
materials of the SHA.
 To provide an additional budget of $65,000 annually for basic maintenance and
processing costs—i.e archival storage supplies; hiring of temp workers to help with
processing; office supplies; etc.
 To provide in addition another $40,000 for the first year of operations for major
equipment investments—including, for example, a 1-meter by 1.5-meter scanner for
digitization of large documents like maps and blueprints.

5. Collection Policy

There are at least four categories of materials in the archives; some purely digital,
some on paper. (Those that are on paper are to be immediately scanned in, so that the
original can be filed and the digitized version can be integrated into the digital archive.)

1) The institutional archives of the WEF; these are already organized and available on
databases. These are continuously generated and are passed to the SHA at no cost.

2) Historic materials, such as those donated by Jon. These include things like some
original blueprints and planning documents; original correspondence from engineers; and
especially secondary sources like old books or magazine articles about sewer development
projects. Also includes archival photographs, oral histories, and other ephemera, multimedia
materials, etc.
The first two years of the archive’s existence is expected to be in a large part devoted
to building up this collection of historic resources. The $200,000 grant from the EPA for
each of the first two years will go to cover both the salary for an additional archivist assistant,
and the costs of acquisition of these materials. The archivist will determine what to focus on,
 Duncan 7

what is necessary to have in the archive, what is worthwhile for the expense incurred, and
what can be obtained digitally instead of as an original document.
A few primary categories of materials were specified in the original plan for the
archive, including materials related to Haussman’s 19th-century construction of the Paris
sewer system; Bazelgette’s 19th-century construction of the London sewer system; the
massive drainage system outside Tokyo, the largest in the world; and the 20th-century efforts
to clean up urban waterways by treating sewage before it is released. These are only a few
examples of the total range of materials appropriate for accession. These are also materials
collected as part of the archive’s mission to be a resource for educating the public, and in
particular they are materials appropriate for inclusion in the traveling exhibitions that the
SHA hopes to sponsor in the future.

3) Digitized versions of historic materials belonging to other institutions.

It is important to the mission of the SHA to have a comprehensive resource on sewer
history. The vast majority of users—professional or public—will use only the digital
material. This means that not only should all SHA materials be digitized, but it also means
that in many cases it is not vital for the SHA to have the original, if they can get digitized
versions.
During the first two-year acquisition period for the archive, when it will try to build
up its library of materials, sources of this sort of digitized material will be institutions, like
the Paris Sewer Museum; libraries; and municipal or government agencies, like the
Department of Water and Power in LA or the EPA at the federal level.
Copyright and user access issues will be central to the accession of this sort of
material. To a large extent, rights management will be a very important part of the work that
the archivist does.

4) Construction or corporate records.

The SHA expects to acquire much of its informational resources on sewerage in more
recent decades to come from the huge contracting companies that have built sewage projects
for cities and towns over the years. It is assumed, conservatively, that companies will be
disinclined to release records of projects less than 20 years old for confidentiality reasons.
However, companies might be served by releasing older records inasmuch as releasing them
to the SHA means that the company no longer has to care for them, while knowing that they
will remain well-preserved and accessible. Additionally, large firms might see the advantage
in building brand awareness through the inclusion of their projects in exhibits sponsored by
the SHA.
It is the goal of the SHA, in its first two years, to reach out to the fifteen most
important sewer construction companies in the world (by McGraw Hill 2008 Construction
Rankings) and to establish working relationships with each.

6. Volunteers

For volunteers, the SHA will reach out to the membership of the WEF, a pool of
about 35,000 professionals in fields related to wastewater management. As many as 2,500
 Duncan 8

currently serve as volunteers on WEF projects and committees, and many will likely be
interested in helping with the SHA as well.
This pool of people is dispersed throughout the world, and communication will
generally be over the internet. For example, if the SHA needs help in creating descriptions
for batches of newly accessioned material, it might be able to organize volunteers to describe
them based on digitized versions. Such descriptions would then probably be reviewed by an
archivist as the final step in processing. It’s also possible that the SHA could develop a system
in which peer review replaces some degree of archivist oversight; after all, much the
membership of the WEF is already accustomed to engaging in the peer review process for
academic and technical journals.
It is not expected that the SHA will have a Friends of the Archive group, since that
seems more often to involve members who are geographically close to the archive itself.
Instead, the SHA might form a “Sewer History Archive Association.” This would be a large
pool of people with little selection criteria; they would receive an electronic newsletter
monthly, as well as announcements or volunteer requests.

7. Access and Revenue

This archive is simultaneously both an institutional archive (for the WEF and its
publications) and a manuscript repository (for the historic materials both donated by Jon
Schladweiler and collected later). This requires some degree of complexity in developing
access policies. As an institutional archive for the expensive, WEF-members-and-subscribers-
only trade publications and journals, the WEF will be ill-served if these resources are
available free to anyone. On the other hand, the SHA’s mission to be a public educational
institution and to raise public awareness of sewerage issues will be ill-served if the archive is
accessible only to WEF members.
Therefore, not all of the archive resources will have the same access policies. First,
only WEF members will have full, unrestricted access to the physical archives; other
researchers will be treated on a case-by-case basis or perhaps the SHA will develop a fee-based
physical access policy as appropriate. However, the primary focus of the SHA is its digitized
resources, which will be available online.

Access for Historic Materials Collection:

In this online archive, the historic materials will be fully accessible and free to the
public. (This is a condition of Jon Schladweiler’s donation of his collection, and it is
specified in the formation of the archive program.)
To make them easy to find, the material will be organized in multiple ways. First, it
will be classified by location (country, state, city, an approximate longitude/latitude location)
so that it is browsable geographically.
Second, it will be fully searchable through metadata and internal content. Whenever
anything is scanned, for example, OCR text recognition can be used to pull the textual
content, and this allows search functions to recognize words from within any manuscript or
 Duncan 9

image file. In terms of producing the metadata, volunteer help (either using a wikipedia
model, a peer-review model, or an archivist-as-oversight model) can be used—see
“Volunteer” section above.
Third, the material will also be categorized in whatever ways the archivist deems
appropriate to aid in understanding and contextualizing the material. These three aspects can
co-exist in the online world, of course; for example, a user could easily switch from a
“Geographic” view to one or another “Archivist-organized” view, using whatever method is
best for finding the material he or she is researching.

Access for WEF Institutional Archive Materials and corporate/construction records:

The papers and articles from the WEF publications will also be incorporated into the
online archive, but will only be viewable in short preview form for the general public. A non-
member researcher seeking such an article will be able to pay either for single-use or long-
term access, at a pricing scale to be determined by the archival staff along with the WEF
publishing staff. Members of the WEF and its member associations, however, will have full
and complete access to all of these resources online.
Project records donated to the archive by construction companies or public agencies
will likely be treated similarly to the WEF articles, with free member access and paid private-
user access, but this can be determined over the course of the initial three years.
Corporate and educational institutions will also be able to purchase institutional
access, as is now done with online databases like Lexis-Nexis. In particular, there are many
consulting companies throughout the world that are hired to help plan and realize sewerage
and urban infrastructure projects for municipalities. Consultants and researchers are also
hired by developers to compile historical-significance reports as part of mandatory
environmental impact reports prior to construction. (A consulting firm was hired to write a
novella-length analysis of Newark’s sewer system, for example, and as a result Newark’s
sewers are now part of the National Register of Historic Places.) These companies,
consultants, and educational institutions will find the SHA a valuable resource. It is expected
that, over time, paid access will become a significant revenue source for the SHA.

8. Public Outreach
It is an important part of the mission of the SHA to pro-actively seek to increase
public understanding and awareness of the contributions that sewers and wastewater
management make to our quality of life and the quality of our environment. The SHA will
therefore partner with other educational institutions and museums to develop exhibits
showcasing materials from the SHA. This part of the SHA mission will be developed during
its first three years of existence, with the support of the EPA grant.
 Duncan 10

9. Budget Summary for First Three Years:

YEAR 1 YEAR 2 YEAR 3

EPA GRANT $200,000.00 $200,000.00 $200,000.00

WEF: First-Year equipment

contribution $40,000.00
WEF: Annual program maintenance
contribution $65,000.00 $65,000.00 $65,000.00
Revenue from
Institutional/corporate
subscriptions (non-WEF members): $0.00 $2,000.00 $8,000.00

Program Coordinator #1 (Existing

WEF employee, who will probably
spend 1/4 of his time on the
program) Paid by WEF Paid by WEF Paid by WEF
Archivist: Paid by WEF Paid by WEF Paid by WEF
IT Manager: Paid by WEF Paid by WEF Paid by WEF
Rent & Utilities &
Telecommunications: Paid by WEF Paid by WEF Paid by WEF
Grant-writing expenses: Paid by WEF Paid by WEF Paid by WEF

WEF-FUNDED PROGRAM:
Business Equipment (scanner,
computers, etc) and Maintenance
(Note: almost all computer and data
storage and software costs are
borne by the WEF): ($55,000.00) ($10,000.00) ($10,000.00)

Corporate/Construction records
acquisition: ($10,000.00) ($20,000.00) ($20,000.00)

Other costs: ($35,000.00) ($25,000.00) ($25,000.00)

Program Director/Assistant
Archivist: ($65,000.00) ($65,000.00) ($65,000.00)
2nd Assistant Archivist: ($35,000.00) ($40,000.00) ($40,000.00)
Public Outreach & Exhibit
Coordinator (2nd and 3rd years
only) $0.00 ($35,000.00) ($35,000.00)
Employee Benefits at 15% of
salary: ($15,000.00) ($21,000.00) ($21,000.00)

EPA-FUNDED PROGRAM (Additional Acquisition of historic materials: ($85,000.00) ($39,000.00) ($39,000.00)

funding will be sought):
(plus additional grant (plus additional grant
funding if possible) funding if possible)

Public
Outreach/Exhibition/Curatorial costs
(to be supplemented with other
grants and contributions from
outside institutions): ($5,000.00) ($12,000.00) ($18,000.00)