Samar Chatterjee

Samar Chatterjee (born September 24, 1942) is an Indian-born environmental scientist and engineer who has contributed to the scientific understanding of Recycling of the Radioactive Scrap Metals world wide as well as in the United States of America. He is also a naturalized citizen of the United States and has theorized on enhanced recycling and reuse of all major solid wastes components, including construction and demolition solid wastes. He has presented papers on understanding and the utilization of advanced technologies for recycling radioactively contaminated metals.
He has made many unique contributions in the pursuit of entrepreneurship, professional excellence, and service of the society at large.
He was awarded the Best Outgoing Undergraduate medal of the Pioneering Batch (1960-65) by the Dept of Civil Engg at IIT Kanpur, which recognized his excellence in academic and professional engineering issues in Civil/Sanitary Engineering. He was also elected the Student President of the IIT Kanpur Gymkhana during 1964-65, highlighting his understanding of the issues concerning the management of students' affairs.
He single handedly took over a small environmental consulting business in 1979, that was operating in red and on the brink of bankruptcy. He then managed, directed and developed it into a medium size highly successful and profitable Environmental Management Service company within five years, when it was acquired by a major American Corporation (AES Corporation).

As a principal of this Consulting services, he had developed cutting edge research and design tools for Wastewater System Infiltration and Inflow(I/I) Analysis, the primary basis for the effective design of Municipal and Industrial Wastewater Treatment Systems. As its Chief Executive, he pioneered the development and use of I/I models that would accurately quantify and predict I/I volumes and identified ways to alleviate peak design flows for economic design of proposed waste water treatment systems. He was awarded the Einstein Medal for this highly accurate formulation of the Wastewater Collection System I/I Prediction Model, that has been extensively used throughout the world. He also developed and patented a new technology and device for use as an effective “Sewer Sag Detector” that has been employed to locate and rehabilitate sewers for I/I management.

Besides, he also rescued two other companies from bankruptcy and then made them profitable medium size successful companies. The first is the Tata Risk Management Services(TRMS), a subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd. In 1993, TRMS ran huge losses as an Industrial Safety management company. As its General Manager, he directed and diversified the company as an Environmental Services and Safety Audit consulting services and made it a very profitable subsidiary of Tata Sons within five years and helped to sell it for a big profit to the American Insurance conglomerate, the AIG. This was a major Trans-Atlantic entrepreneurial achievement, at a time when India was just going global.

Once again, he was able to perform a very similar feat with another North American small business unit, the International Technology Transfer (ITT), early in the new millennium. The ITT Ltd was a small environmental consulting firm in Chicago, with a Joint Venture parent company in Canada. The firm was running at a loss when it was taken over for restructuring under a new management. He directed the greening of the firm, with effective marketing and diversification of its services, that led to greater profitability and a stable customer base for the firm. The firm has now been acquired by a major Canada based Conglomerate.
He was also the Senior Research Engineer at the Battelle Laboratories in Columbus, Ohio. He also pioneered the development of the world renowned Battelle Environmental Evaluation System(BEES) Model, that has been extensively employed for Environmental Impact Assessment and Analysis throughout the world. He has provided effective leadership and participation in many major EIA studies that led to environmentally sound decision making with respect to several major projects/programs, such as the James Bay Development Program in Canada, Cross-Florida Barge Canal in Florida USA, LNG Storage & Transportation Project in South Carolina, Mobile Alabama Deepwater Super-Port & Petrochemical Complex, etc. Development of these large-scale complex program decision documents reminds us of his high level of professional excellence and entrepreneurship.
Early life and education
Chatterjee was born on September 24, 1942 at Varanasi, India. He was sent to a boarding school at St Michael High School in Patna at the age of five. After a few years, when his father was transferred from the Ordinance Factory at Ichhapur (Bengal) to Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh), he was moved to Kanpur to be tutored at home so that he could be admitted to a school teaching in Hindi language. He completed his High School education in 1957 with honors receiving a merit scholarship through the U.P. Board of Education, and subsequently the Intermediate Certificate (Class 12) in 1959 with the same institution. Thereafter, he took up the study of Physics/Chemistry/Mathematics at the VSSD College for a Bachelor's Degree. However, in August, 1960, he terminated his study of the Pure Sciences in favor of Engineering as he was selected by the newly constituted Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, or IITK.
He graduated with a B Tech Degree in Engineering in April, 1965, qualifying with distinction to be awarded the Best Outgoing Undergrad Medal in Civil Engineering at IIT Kanpur. His first job was at Calcutta, India, with the Park Street Consulting & Design firm named Chatterjee & Polk. He worked on the design and construction of the Gorakhpur Fertilizer Factory. In addition, he was also appointed as the Sub-Divisional Officer with the Uttar Pradesh Water Corporation (The U.P. Jal Nigam) at Allahabad, India, from 1966-69 to help develop several rural water supply and sanitation projects, funded by the World Bank, to provide the much needed drought relief facilities for the villages located in the Meja, Karchhana and Naugarh Tehsils. Thus began his career in the field of Sanitary Engineering, which were later to evolve into a more amorphous field of Environmental Engineering relating to the Protection of the Environment.
Scientific research
In September 1969, he was invited to Canada as a research fellow at the University of Ottawa to participate in their Graduate Research Program devoted to Environmental Protection that was funded by the National Research Council. He completed a Master's Degree in Water Resources Engineering as well as developed a comprehensive research thesis on the "Investigation of Dam Failures" based on a review of data on about 400 important dam failures, disaster modes and frequencies, and estimated damages due to such disasters. This research contributed significantly to the evolution, improvement and development of the American, Canadian and European Dam Safety Programs.
Furthermore, his extensive work on dam safety led to the development of new and improved perspectives with respect to the human dimensions of managing dams and reservoirs, which thereby focused on the probabilistic methods of minimizing failures and resulting damage costs, as detailed in the two important articles in the Water Power journals. Thus, the engineers responsible for the design of dams and reservoirs began to work closely with economists and behavioural scientists on important dam safety issues in order to help alleviate damage potential of such structures.
Chatterjee was subsequently invited to join Canada's Department of Energy Mines & Resources to work on issues like sociological aspects of water development, beneficial uses of thermal discharges, and modelling water resources systems. In 1972, he was invited to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill to carry out research in areas such as environmental impact assessment, sociological aspects of water development, and health effects of air pollution as a research fellow, supported by funding from the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C..
During this assignment, he completed a Master's Degree in Environmental Planning & Management at the UNC as well as developing a research report entitled "Sociological Aspects of Water Development: A Literature Review", which was published by the Policy Research and Coordination Branch, Department of Environment, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. This report found that the past decisions to develop water resources systems were primarily based on engineering and economic feasibilities, without any consideration of sociological feasibility except in a very broad sense. It further documented in substantive detail the significant sociological implications that emanated from many past water resources developments, and argued that water resources decisions ought to be primarily social ones, and that success or failure of any such developments should not only be judged by its techno-economic excellence but also by its impact on people. The report also suggested that the foremost factor in the success of any water management program is the public understanding and acceptance of any water development program. This new major research finding led to significant changes in the future water resources planning processes and became the corner-stone of various modern institutionalised public participation programs that are now incorporated in the planning of most major development projects or programs requiring environmental impact assessment and subsequent public participation before final decision-making.
His earlier research contributions at the Battelle Laboratories in Columbus, Ohio, USA, included work on construction and demolition wastes which led to two research documents developed for the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (Champaign, Illinois) (CERL) of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The first report consolidated and expanded the current state of the art of construction solid wastes management predictive criteria. The second research report developed the basis for the current state of the art of demolition solid wastes management predictive criteria. Both documents were initially published in the CERL Research Report Series as N-14 and N-15; the revised and peer reviewed versions of these research documents were subsequently published by the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce in Washington, DC, USA.
From 1990 to 1993, he served as a research consultant with the United States Department of Energy(USDOE) investigating the potential for recycling radioactive scrap metals (RSM) originating from various USDOE sites devoted to the development of nuclear weapons. Substantial technical data developed during this study showed that melt refining and recycling of RSM can be performed cost effectively for restricted use items like shielding barriers, hazardous waste containers, steel rebars for industrial facilities, weapons components, and selected industrial equipments and structures. This study also investigated several new technologies, such as molten salt decontamination process, molten metal electro refining, laser induced separation (LIS), and accelerator transmutation of waste (ATW), in order to identify and establish currently available best practicable technology (BPT) for RSM decontamination and recycling in the United States. The results of these studies have been documented in the peer reviewed journals of the American Nuclear Society. Additional details of these studies have been summarized and reported in other important peer reviewed journal articles.
As General Manager of the Tata Risk Management Services in India, he was a pioneer in strongly emphasizing and encouraging the use of environmental analyses and impact assessment in the initial planning and development of industrial projects and associated crucial site selection process. The Business Insurance magazine called it the "Charge of the Green Brigade". The editors of the Economic Times Mumbai described the best environmental management practices (BEMP) for the Integrated Steel Plants (ISP), developed by Samar Chatterjee, as an effective solution for pollution management in India. His innovative proposals to implement and expand the new coal injection technology, to help reduce the quantity of coke required in the operation of the blast furnaces, greatly reduced the pollution emissions to the environment as well as achieved one hundred percent slag granulation at selected steel plants in India.
Water Environment Federation (WEF) was formed in 1928 as a not-for-profit technical and educational organization that today has 35,000 individual members and 75 affiliated Member Associations representing water quality professionals around the world. As a member of this reputed WEF Research Committee, Samar Chatterjee was assigned the responsibility for developing the Annual State of the Art reports on Wastewater Collection from 1977 to 1981, based on a comprehensive International Literature Review. The results of these important studies were published in the Journal of Water Pollution Control Federation.
The most substantive information on the life and contributions of Samar Chatterjee has been investigated and corroborated in a recent study by Khemani. The study presents a balanced review and verification of the achievements summarized in this biography.

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