Stepinac High School’s groundbreaking Honors Academy will present a Clean Water Solution Symposium focused on the contaminated drinking water crisis in Flint, Mich., a public health emergency that remains unresolved and now forgotten more than three years after dangerous levels of lead were detected.
The session, which is free and open to the public, will be held Wednesday, May 30 at 6 p.m. at the school’s Major Bowes Auditorium, 950 Mamaroneck Ave., White Plains.
Mary Calvi, the distinguished television journalist and mother of two Stepinac sons, will serve as moderator. She is co-anchor of “CBS2 This Morning” and “CBS2 At Noon” on WCBS-TV in New York City, and the recipient of nine Emmy Awards.
Participating will be a panel comprised of academy students who are undertaking project studies in their four respective academic disciplines – engineering, law, health sciences and finance – as well as four experts in those fields who will review the scope of the students’ research and explore potential applications to resolve a number of interrelated issues in the Flint case.
The distinguished panelists are:
Anthony Capicotto, P.E., a Stepinac alumnus (Class of 1983) who, during his 31-year career, served as a senior project engineer in the design of municipal water and sewer system infrastructure projects including pumping, treatment and storage facilities. He has also provided consulting engineering services to various communities in Westchester County. For the past five years, he has served as village engineer for Elmsford, overseeing water system operations.
Morri Markowitz, M.D., is director of the Lead Poisoning Prevention and Treatment Program for the Department of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore (University Hospital for Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The diagnosis and treatment of lead poisoning among children and pregnant women has been the focus of his clinical research.
Christopher Daly is founder, CEO and president of Synergy Alternative Capital Management, a New York-metropolitan area investment firm. Also a Stepinac alumnus (Class of ’89), he was previously a 22-year Wall Street veteran who served in key management positions of leading investment firms including Weeden & Co, BTIG and ISI.
Walter Schwartz is a practicing attorney based in Ardsley with more than 55 years of experience. He also served as a justice for the Village of Ardsley and is a former member of the Attorney Grievance Committee, Ninth Judicial District.
The scope of the projects includes:
Engineering academy students will build a lead extraction prototype, test its results against a brand filter currently in use to establish a baseline, and compile the data to analyze the results by comparing their inventions.
Law academy students will research the lawsuits and litigation that have arisen from the disaster, analyze the legal issues and arguments of key cases and provide an update of their current status and discuss likely outcomes.
Health sciences academy students will research the signs and symptoms of lead poisoning in children, create information tools for parents and pediatric offices and develop a nutrition plan that can help reduce the effects of lead poisoning.
Finance academy students will research how many homes in each of the Westchester communities were built before 1930. With this information they will find the mean and create a model village that will become the basis the students will use to identify the cost of replacing lead pipes from the house to the water main. It is a model that can be replicated anywhere.
The students are also preparing a prospectus to entice prospective investors to invest in a municipal bond agreement that will be sponsored by the model village to underwrite the cost of ridding the village of lead pipes used for drinking water.
For more information, visit www.Stepinac.org.
