Articles by Jim Lauria
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Water Is Beer
3/25/2024
My water career started with beer. No, not the amount I drank on my way to my chemical engineering degree at Manhattan College. I mean the 10,000+ hours I spent optimizing filtration systems in breweries throughout the world.
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9/11 Unsung Heroes: How River Water Valves Saved New York City's Subways
9/11/2023
When Jim Lauria visited New York's 9/11 Memorial and Museum several years ago, he learned there exists a lesser-known tale of heroism beneath the Twin Towers, involving a subterranean network of river water valves that played a vital role in protecting the city's subway system.
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Selling The Value Of Water
8/15/2023
I love to read and recently published My 15 Favorite Water Books. (I just added one more to the list after reading Peter Gleick’s book The Three Ages of Water).
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Peace Of Mind Starts With Your Water Supply
7/31/2023
It's no understatement to say that I am deeply into water. As a water professional, I think about water all the time. I stay current on the technologies that help keep our water supply safe. I am an avid student of the history of water systems. I grew up in New York City, home to the best-tasting water in the world, and I'm fortunate to live in the U.S., which has a high national standard for water quality, safeguarded by the colleagues I saw recently at AWWA's ACE conference.
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Water Trading vs. Water Speculation: What Would Michael Lewis Say?
5/2/2023
I'm a big fan of author, reporter, and overall sharp-eyed observer Michael Lewis, author of Liar's Poker, The Big Short, Moneyball, and other explorations of the depths of economics and humans' capacity for brilliance...and greed. With a new wave of interest in water trading, facilitated by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and NASDAQ listing water as a tradeable commodity, I'm very eager to get Lewis' take on what he sees.
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Two Water Movies: The Harmful And The Hopeful
3/8/2023
Adam Tank and I just had Travis Loop as a guest on our podcast Water We Talking About, and he gave us an update on his initiative to do in-depth reporting on the PFAS issue. And our next guest is Aoife Kelleher, associate producer and lead researcher for the water documentary Brave Blue World. So I thought it would be a good time to repost my review on two very different water movies, Dark Waters and Brave Blue World.
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When It Comes To Water, California Is The Canary In The Gold Mine
2/14/2023
Talking to a friend a couple of weeks ago, the malaprop "canary in the gold mine" popped into the conversation. That was worth a chuckle, but then a moment of reflection. What a perfect way to describe California, nicknamed The Golden State by eager miners during the Gold Rush of the 1840s and '50s, that has been yielding a steady stream of riches from its farms, forests, mines, and minds ever since.
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Stormwater Management Is A Worldwide Challenge
2/6/2023
Last month, I wrote about San Francisco's great rain garden/bio-retention basin project. Strategically placed sunken curb cuts, swales, or park features collect stormwater and let it filter into the ground, reducing the pressure on overwhelmed storm drains and sewers.
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Rain Gardens Guarding San Francisco
1/27/2023
Laurie Lauria and I spent last week moving out of San Francisco up to Napa, California, dodging the raindrops and taking advantage of a few dry days in this remarkably stormy winter — weather that makes this a perfect time to talk about the need to capture rainwater and protect overwhelmed urban sewer systems.
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Water Messages From Above...
12/29/2022
At the end of 2022, I want to give a big thanks to all the guests who appeared on our #waterwetalkingabout podcast this past year.