The Importance of Drought: Good for Business?

Normally, when people hear the word ‘drought’ it’s thought of with a negative connotation. In the water business, however, that’s not always the case.

“One of the most important aspects of the drought is that it makes us reposition how we view water. All of a sudden, we realize now it's something that can't be extracted, consumed, and thrown away, so we are having to re-use water more and more,” Jon McClean, President of Neptune Benson / ETS-UV, told Water Online radio in an interview. Years ago, no one saw the full extent to which we are having to recycle and reuse water, a fact that has taken the industry by surprise.

Therefore, the drought, overall, is good for the business, because there are contaminants of emerging concern in some of the reused water. For example, a typical wastewater plant wasn’t built to take out steroids, synthetic organics, etc., so there is an increasing need for UV disinfection and advanced oxidation processes to remove these contaminants.

McClean’s predictions for the future of water include, “In five or ten years' time, there will be even more pressure on water. We are heading toward a nexus where we will have power stress, and water stress, so solutions will have to be very economical in terms of energy usage.

Footprint will inevitably be a critical design parameter, because as we age, our cities are urbanizing. Populations are moving to cities, so we are living in bigger and bigger cities. That puts more and more pressure on utilities to reduce footprint.”

Click the radio player below to listen to the full interview and hear more about on these topics, as well as the technologies that Neptune Benson / ETS-UV has to offer.