UK researcher addresses water sustainability challenges through workforce-focused engineering solutions
Video produced by Ben Corwin and Erin Wickey, UK Research Communications.
Access to safe drinking water depends not only on infrastructure, but on the people who operate and maintain it. At the University of Kentucky, Diana Byrne, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering in the Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering, is addressing long-standing challenges facing small water utilities.
Byrne received the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award with $547,471 over five years for her work.
When Byrne joined UK in 2020, she began working with the Appalachian Community Technical Assistance and Training Program, an university-community partnership that supports small, rural water utilities throughout Appalachia. The program focuses on helping utilities address challenges unique to their communities, including technical training and workforce preparation.
“These are the people who are on the ground and run our water systems, making sure that we get water that we drink safely every day,” Byrne said.
Among other support, the program provides workshops to help operators learn key topics such as math and hydraulics which are covered on their licensing exams.
Through this work, Byrne began to see a growing problem affecting water utilities statewide: a shrinking workforce paired with aging infrastructure and declining customer bases.
“The infrastructure is getting older, pipes are breaking and we have water loss,” Byrne said. “Also, a lot of the workforce is close to retirement and there just aren’t people to fill that gap.”
According to a 2022 Kentucky Water and Wastewater Workforce survey led by UK faculty Lindell Ormsbee, Ph.D., 30% of operators planned to retire within six years, increasing concerns about workforce shortages.
One aspect of Byrne’s work involves collaboration with correctional facilities to expand training opportunities for incarcerated individuals preparing to reenter the workforce.
“The Bell County Forestry Camp has water treatment plants inside the prison,” Byrne said. “They’ve been working with some of the incarcerated men to learn about operating a water treatment plant. We’re trying to bring our workshops inside the prison to benefit those possible operators and engage them in the workforce upon reentry.”
Beyond infrastructure and workforce development, Byrne hopes the project’s impact will be felt through the people involved, including students, utilities and future operators.
“These problems are decades long, complex problems. I hope from an engineering perspective we’re a drop in the bucket or a step along the way in helping those utilities,” Byrne said.
“Mostly, I hope that we help people in some way.”
The CAREER Award is one of the “most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization,” according to NSF.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award Number 2440917. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Video Transcript
My name is Diana Byrne, and I am an assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering here at UK.
When I came here to Kentucky, I started working with this group called the Appalachian Community Technical Assistance and Training Program. That group works with small Appalachian rural water utilities on helping whatever the unique challenges that they're facing.
We do things like workshops to help operators learn the math that's on their licensing exams. The people who, on the ground every day, run our water systems—make sure that we get water that we can drink safely every day.
It was through this experience and learning more about our challenges in Kentucky—the workforce challenges that we have—and not enough operators, people working really, really hard around the clock to do a really, really important meaningful job, but we don't have enough people to do them. And that's when it kind of clicked with me. While we have not enough operators, we also have people who are incarcerated who are going to reenter and can benefit from those job opportunities in such a meaningful career path.
My project focuses on water distribution systems. Those are the pipe networks that take water from where it's cleaned—at the treatment plant—to our faucets. You have to get that water up these mountains, which requires lots of energy to pump it up there. And then you have to balance the pressures of, like, people down here and people up there and making sure the water doesn't just gush out of the faucet, but also doesn't just trickle out of the faucet. As population decreases, that's a declining customer base for the water utilities, so that means less money that they have for maintenance. The infrastructure is getting older, so pipes are breaking. We have water loss. And then also this workforce piece—generationally—is close to retirement and there just aren't people to fill that gap.
There’s a really unique thing in Bell County Forestry Camp where they actually have water treatment plants inside the prison. They’ve been working with some of the men who are incarcerated in that prison to learn about operating a water treatment plant. I believe they can even take their operator licensing exam from the State while they're incarcerated, which is very cool. What we’re trying to do is take the same types of workshops inside of Bell County Forestry Camp to benefit those possible operators who are inside. Hopefully, that helps their operation of their own system, but also engages them to possibly enter that workforce upon reentry.
Mostly, I hope that our impact comes through the people that the project involves. So, I hope that someone from prison becomes an operator in the workforce in Kentucky. And I hope that our students in engineering learn about the complexity of these challenges, and that changes the way that there are engineers in Kentucky and beyond. I hope grad students working on the project get valuable research and life experiences, and I hope that I get to keep working on these things throughout my career.
These problems are decades long, complex problems. I hope—from an engineering perspective—I hope we’re a drop in the bucket or a step along the way in helping those utilities. But mostly, I hope that we help people in some way.