DEER ISLAND

I spent most of my Professional career as an Environmental Engineer working out of the Environmental Protection Agency offices in Boston. In the 1980’s I was assigned  EPA’s chief engineer overseeing the planning, design and construction of the MWRA’s waste treatment plant at Deer Island. It was obvious from the start we had insufficient land on Deer Island to handle the wastewater from the 43 communities (North and South) that would eventually be tied into the system. I was aware that Tokyo, Japan had a similar problem and solved it by using a relatively new technology –stacked clarifiers. So I went to my boss and tried to convince him to send me and a team of  engineers from the Commonwealth and the private sector to Tokyo. At first he said no, then realized that it made sense so off we went.
 The Japanese government assigned us an engineer that graduated from Cornell who spoke fluent English. I asked him to teach me a few words of Japanese. He said he would start me out with a simple word. He said tomorrow when you meet the delegation from Tokyo simply bow in respect and say the word “Ohio”, which in Japanese is a form of greeting. So the next day as head engineer of the delegation I stepped forward, bowed respectfully and said “Iowa”. Even today as I bump into my colleagues that accompanied me to Tokyo, I am greeted with a simple word “Iowa.” By the way we eventually adopted the Japanese technology and we have stacked clarifiers on Deer Island.