SUMMARY: Nashville State Community College and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) have partnered to offer VUMC employees a 12-week fast-track training program to become Certified Central Sterile Processing (CSP) Technicians. CSP Technicians play a vital role in surgical support by sterilizing and managing medical instruments. The program includes classroom instruction, hands-on training, and clinical immersion at VUMC’s Case Cart Operations Center. VUMC covers tuition and pays employees during training. Now in its third cohort, the program has trained 18 students, with eight currently enrolled. Graduates earn Healthcare Sterile Processing Association certification and transition into full-time roles at VUMC, addressing critical workforce needs.

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The post Nashville State, VUMC Partnership Continues to Fast-Track Surgical Support Careers – The Tennessee Tribune appeared first on tntribune.com

SUMMARY: Federal immigration officials are making arrests from Tennessee jails at a higher rate than most states, ranking second only to Texas for ICE detainees picked up from jail. A Prison Policy Initiative report highlights Tennessee among the top five states for ICE arrests per capita, especially inside jails. Data suggests local police arrest individuals, sometimes for minor offenses like driving without a license, then hold them for ICE pickup, supporting President Trump’s mass deportation efforts. Knox County saw a sharp rise in ICE detainees from 6 in January to nearly 50 in April. Homeland Security plans to increase agents in Tennessee.

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by Cassandra Stephenson, Tennessee Lookout
September 2, 2025

A company looking to make clean drinking water more climate-resilient and accessible during disasters found an ideal testing ground in an unlikely place: Amy Grant’s Williamson County farm.

Florida-based Altitude Water began working with the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter in 2014, when she needed a drinking water source to support a youth summer camp on the rural property in a short time frame.

Grant already had one of the company’s smaller machines, which use technology to pull water from the humid atmosphere. In a matter of weeks, Altitude Water installed a large machine capable of producing more than 100 gallons of drinking water each day, enough to have a gallon of water on hand for each camp attendee.

“We got it done,” Altitude Water Founder and COO Jeff Szur said. “Then from that, as the farm kept growing, we needed more water. She allowed us to use the farm to do some research and development.”

Eleven years later, Grant’s Hidden Trace Farm is now fully water independent — generating, purifying and storing up to 800 gallons of water each day with no reliance on city infrastructure, Szur said.

The system is an unassuming cluster of machines and storage tanks tucked under a covered patio. An atmospheric water generator uses evaporation and condensation to turn humidity from the air into water. An ozone generator runs an electrical charge through the air to create ozone gas. That ozone is then used to purify rainwater and water from the sulfur-laden aquifer below ground. Using ozone to purify water is also a time-tested idea first developed in the 1890s in Europe.

Weather at Altitude Water’s South Florida headquarters is often hot and humid, ideal conditions for the atmospheric water generators to produce high water yields. But other areas of the country — and the world — experience greater range. The company needed to test the machines’ limits in cooler, dryer conditions.

“Testing at Amy Grant’s farm gave us the cooler temperatures and conditions we needed to develop the water and purification systems we are now using in disaster zones and rural communities,” Szur said.

Altitude Water’s smallest machine, which is about the size of a 5-gallon water cooler and sells for around $4,000, can produce up to 15 gallons of water each day. The machine will produce about six gallons of water in 74-degree weather with 45% humidity, he said. That drops to three and a half gallons at 35% humidity.

“We can only take the water out that’s in the air,” Szur said. 

Grant’s farm uses a machine that can produce around 185 gallons of water in 24 hours.

While other companies make machines that similarly use evaporation and condensation to produce water from the air – a natural process that Szur says no one can patent – Altitude Water does hold a patent for their ozone injection system.

The “water hub” system first tested at Hidden Trace can now be seen around the world, providing water to off-grid Maka, Cameroon, and helping survivors in Asheville, North Carolina in the months after Hurricane Helene.

“As communities across the U.S. face ground contamination, aging infrastructure, and climate-driven water emergencies, the work we’ve achieved at Hidden Trace Farm has given us a replicable path forward,” Szur said.

Water, power and cell service on wheels

Altitude Water’s Disaster Relief Trailer got one of its first field tests after wildfires scorched Maui in 2023. It was equipped with a machine that could capture up to 390 gallons of water from the air per day, and a 500-gallon storage tank. There was no time to set the trailer up for solar power, Szur said, so it ran off of a diesel generator.

The company’s second trailer — this time, with a solar power option — was put to the test in Asheville after Hurricane Helene. Altitude Water partnered with Grassroots Aid Partnership and Footprint Project, a nonprofit that provides solar power for communities facing crisis, for disaster response efforts. 

The trailer was equipped with machines able to produce 210 gallons of water and purify 1,500 gallons. Solar panels could generate 12 kilowatts an hour and with 60 kilowatts of battery storage that allowed the water purification machine to run at night. The company also installed Starlink satellite technology, providing phone and internet service. 

“It’s basically a command center with everything you need, without having to ship everything in every day,” Szur said. “You don’t have to ship in gas, you don’t have to ship in bottled water, and then you have your communications, which we added because we saw in Maui — with all the towers burned — how bad the logistics were.”

The trailer is compatible with a gas generator and municipal hookups as well, “because you never know when you get into a disaster what the situation is going to be.”

Dave Anderson, executive director of Grassroots Aid Partnership, recounted his organization’s initial recovery efforts in Asheville in a November video posted to social media. Upon setting up their food operation, they discovered there was no water, power, internet or phone service.

“We forget how reliant we are on these things, so when Altitude came in with this trailer, Bamo! We had water, we had internet, and we had power, so that was a great thing to just start off with,” Anderson said.

Flexibility proved helpful in Asheville, where the trailer stayed for a little over three months, Szur said. The weather became cold and dry, significantly reducing the amount of water that could be pulled from the air.

But the trailer’s water purification capabilities and solar power remained useful, he said.

“Being able to purify the water using our ozone purification process was a godsend, and again, it was being able to do the research and development on Amy’s farm that enabled us to do that,” Szur said.

Szur, who studied economics and business at Vanderbilt University, said he and his father entered the water business together after selling their respective restaurant and oil well businesses. 

“We looked at a lot of the industries and thought that water was going to be the next oil,” Szur said. “We’ve spent centuries using water as our dumping ground to all these chemicals and just trying to dilute the chemicals down to a level that’s safe to drink.”

But it’s not just about technology that provides clean water, he said.

“It can not only help people by giving them a resource, but also give them hope,” Szur said.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.

The post Drinking water tech tested on Amy Grant’s farm now used for disaster relief, climate resilience appeared first on tennesseelookout.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

This content is largely informational and focuses on a technological solution for water purification and disaster relief, highlighting the innovation and humanitarian benefits of the company’s products. The article refrains from political commentary or partisan framing, instead emphasizing practical and science-based solutions that have broad appeal across the political spectrum. It includes perspectives from entrepreneurs and community aid representatives without any apparent ideological slant. As such, the tone and subject matter align with a neutral, centrist approach.