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Current Issue
Enduring Tradition
YEP Introduces Urban Youth to Environmental Opportunities
by Stephen Hochbrunn, NEIWPCC
The best description of this year’s Youth and the Environment program in Lowell, Mass., came from Fred Hamel, an engineering technician at the Lowell Regional Wastewater Facility. During a ceremony at NEIWPCC headquarters in August to honor this year’s graduates, Hamel called the program a “win-win.”
“The students got a lot of work done around the plant, and we benefited from that,” Hamel said. “But they learned a lot too—about the wastewater field and about the environment. And that’s a big benefit to them.”
Since 1990, NEIWPCC, EPA, and the Lowell Regional Wastewater Utility have collaborated in conducting the Youth and the Environment summer program in Lowell, Mass. The program, which is part of a national effort by EPA, stresses hands-on work experience and academic training to introduce disadvantaged inner-city high school students to professional opportunities in the environmental field. Emphasis is placed on careers in the wastewater industry, which is experiencing a shortage of young people entering its workforce. The participants are paid as they gain new knowledge, learn new skills, and find out about a rewarding career path.
“It was a lot of fun,” said Enock Mukiibi, one of the students in this year’s program, at the graduation ceremony. “Really, it was a great job. Thank you for the opportunity.”
During the six-week program, the students spent most of their days at the Lowell facility, working in a variety of the wastewater plant’s operations, including pretreatment, maintenance, landscaping, and lab work. In the afternoons, they gathered to hear lessons on wastewater treatment and other environmental issues from NEIWPCC’s YEP Coordinator, Bryan Hogan. The lessons covered such topics as the water cycle, tide pools, water quality, water pollution and prevention, and microorganisms that live in water.
“It was great interacting with the kids, just amazing,” said Hogan. “The best part of it was watching them go from not caring about wastewater treatment or even the environment to beginning to understand how important they are.”
The group also went on educational field trips to the Seacoast Science Center in Rye, New Hampshire; the Squam Lake Natural Science Center in Holderness, New Hampshire; and the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant.
For more information on the Youth and the Environment Program, contact NEIWPCC’s Mike Jennings at 978-323-7929 or mjennings@neiwpcc.org.