SWANA Offers First Spanish Language Training Course

SWANA has recently completed the translation of its first Spanish language training course, Waste Screening at MSW Management Facilities. The growing Spanish-speaking workforce and the requests of several Chapters of SWANA for Spanish language materials, along with the creation of the Caribbean-Puerto Rico Chapter of SWANA, prompted the Association’s decision to begin translating current training courses into Spanish.

SWANA has been in the process of updating its training courses over the past few years, and has recently began evaluating which courses would be most useful to Spanish speakers. Currently, the Association has deemed operational courses, such as Waste Screening at MSW Management Facilities, to be most important. Another operational course, Landfill Operations Basics, is expected to be completed in April 2010.

The Waste Screening at MSW Management Facilities course was updated in 2009, thanks to the services of Innovative Waste Consulting Services (IWCS), a consulting firm in Gainesville, Florida. Developed from a university research environment, IWCS has state-of-the-art expertise in areas such as landfills, waste treatment and recycling, and characterization of environmental risk from waste operations. SWANA would like to thank IWSC for a job well done, with a special thanks to Jon Powell, the primary author of the course.

The training course manual presents information and examples of methods and procedures to assist municipal solid waste facility owners and operators to achieve compliance with Federal regulations. The manual is the foundation of the training course, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of 40 CFR, Part 258. The manual and course are intended for use primarily by faclity owners/operators and their consultants and contractors to provide advice on demonstrating compliance with the 258 standards.
The Spanish translation was completed by Strictly Spanish, a consultant firm based in Milford, Ohio, but the project could not have been completed without the assistance of a dedicated team of SWANA members who committed their time, technical expertise and knowledge of the Spanish language to assist in the translation of this course. SWANA would like to extend a very special thanks to:

Josephine Valencia, City of Durham
Eduardo D. Choquis, Raba-Kistner Consultants, Inc
Miguel Delgado, SCS Engineers
Rafael Ordonez, Promotora Ambiental
Mickey Ray, The Earth Group, Inc.
Rafael Salazar, Keppel Seghers Inc.
Marissa Segundo, City of Largo

The English and Spanish versions of Waste Screening at MSW Management Facilities course is available for purchase at www.SWANAstore.com as a home study course and an on-site training package. For more information about the English or Spanish versions of the course, please contact learn@swana.org or visit www.SWANA.org.