A critical component in any waste management program is public awareness and participation, in addition to appropriate legislation, strong technical support, and adequate funding. Waste is the result of human activities and everyone needs to have a proper understanding of waste management issues, without which the success of even the best conceived waste management plan becomes questionable. The paper presents an overview of the fundamentals of waste management and, using examples from the United States, illustrates how public awareness and participation results in succcssful waste management. Examples of the methods and techniques that have been very effective in creating and enhancing public awareness of waste management problems, including the author's proven method of public education, are presented in the paper. The details of a course aimed at educating school teachers on waste management issues and a specialized curriculum on waste and litter control, designed for kindergarten through 8th grade students and developed by the author, are discussed in the paper. A case study dealing with remediation of one of the worst contaminated hazardous waste sites in the United States, that included substantial public participation, is reviewed. The paper concludes by emphasizing that the public must be made aware of waste management issues to understand the consequences of improper management of waste and how it may ultimately pose a serious threat to their lives and well-being.

Iraq, a country in the Middle East, has suffered severe drought events in the past two decades due to a significant decrease in annual precipitation. Water storage by building dams can mitigate drought impacts and assure water supply. This study was designed to identify suitable sites to build new dams within the Al-Khabur River Basin (KhRB). Both the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the weighted sum method (WSM) were used and compared to select suitable dam sites. A total of 14 layers were used as input dataset (i.e., lithology, tectonic zones, distance to active faults, distance to lineaments, soil type, land cover, hypsometry, slope gradient, average precipitation, stream width, Curve Number Grid, distance to major roads, distance to towns and cities, and distance to villages). Landsat-8/Operational Land Imager (OLI) and QuickBird optical images were used in the study. Three types of accuracies were tested: overall, suitable pixels by number, and suitable pixels by weight. Based on these criteria, we determined that 11 sites are suitable for locating dams for runoff harvesting. Results were compared to the location of 21 preselected dams proposed by the Ministry of Agricultural and Water Resources (MAWR). Three of these dam sites coincide with those proposed by the MAWR. The overall accuracies of the 11 dams ranged between 76.2% and 91.8%. The two most suitable dam sites are located in the center of the study area, with favorable geology, adequate storage capacity, and in close proximity to the population centers. Of the two selection methods, the AHP method performed better as its overall accuracy is greater than that of the WSM. We argue that when stream discharge data are not available, use of high spatial resolution QuickBird imageries to determine stream width for discharge estimation is acceptable and can be used for preliminary dam site selection. The study offers a valuable and relatively inexpensive tool to decision-makers for eliminating sites having severe limitations (less suitable sites) and focusing on those with the least restriction (more suitable sites) for dam construction.

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On-going monitoring of deformation of dams is critical to assure their safe and efficient operation. Traditional monitoring methods, based on in-situ sensors measurements on the dam, have some limitations in spatial coverage, observation frequency, and cost. This paper describes the potential use of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) scenes from Sentinel-1A for characterizing deformations at the Mosul Dam (MD) in NW Iraq. Seventy-eight Single Look Complex (SLC) scenes in ascending geometry from the Sentinel-1A scenes, acquired from 03 October 2014 to 27 June 2019, and 96 points within the MD structure, were selected to determine the deformation rate using persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI). Maximum deformation velocity was found to be about 7.4 mm·yr−1 at a longitudinal subsidence area extending over a length of 222 m along the dam axis. The mean subsidence velocity in this area is about 6.27 mm·yr−1 and lies in the center of MD. Subsidence rate shows an inverse relationship with the reservoir water level. It also shows a strong correlation with grouting episodes. Variations in the deformation rate within the same year are most probably due to increased hydrostatic stress which was caused by water storage in the dam that resulted in an increase in solubility of gypsum beds, creating voids and localized collapses underneath the dam. PSI information derived from Sentinel-1A proved to be a good tool for monitoring dam deformation with good accuracy, yielding results that can be used in engineering applications and also risk management.