Articles by Jim Lauria

51. Dangerous Waters In A Changing World 10/15/2019

    Americans and Canadians got a peek into the future when the City of Toledo shut its drinking water taps in 2014, issuing a do-not-drink order on the municipal water supplies serving 500,000 people. Levels of microcystin, a potent liver toxin produced by blue-green algae, were more than double the World Health Organization's safe limit. More than 700 square miles of the Lake Erie surface was covered by a harmful algal bloom (HAB), and drinking water plants couldn't remove the algal cells and the toxins they produced.

52. Irrigation Consumer Bill of Rights: Smart Irrigation Starts With Smart Choices 7/18/2019

    As we celebrate Smart Irrigation Month, it's a great time to highlight not only smart technologies, but the smart people and smart decisions behind them. One remarkably smart tool that ties all three of those elements together is the Irrigation Consumer Bill of Rights by Dr. Charles Burt of the Irrigation Training and Research Center (ITRC) at the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo.

53. How To Introduce New Products Into The Water Space: A Case Study 7/9/2019

    Innovation is vital in the water industry and continually moving ahead is a must — even if the company you're trying to surpass is your own. By listening to a wide range of customers and distribution chain partners, Mazzei Injector Company upgraded its revolutionary Pipeline Flash Reactor (PFR) and introduced it to the marketplace with great impact.

54. How To Cannibalize Your Own Technology 4/3/2019

    Business people love to talk about "disruption." They pride themselves on eating their competitors' lunch. Where their markets used to be about raving fans, now it's about inspiring craving fans, fueled by "hunger marketing" and the fear of missing out. There's a lot of dog-eat-dog philosophy...which is why it's important for companies to be willing to cannibalize their own technologies.

55. And I Quote: "To Know Water Is To Love Water" 3/21/2019

    It all started with Mark Twain. Or someone who actually wasn't Mark Twain after all.

56. What Abbott And Costello Can Teach Us About Water 3/23/2018

    World Water Day (Thursday, March 22nd this year) does a great job of focusing our attention on water issues. And especially with storms on the East Coast and drought in the West, not to mention the looming possibility that officials will have to shut off the taps in Cape Town sometime this summer, a lot of the messaging around water is pretty much like being smothered in a wet blanket.

57. Lessons From Leonardo: What Leonardo da Vinci Can Teach Us About Water 1/5/2018

    Salvator Mundi sold for nearly half a billion dollars. Walter Isaacson’s latest biography is a breakaway hit. Management guru Michael Gelb’s book accessing the thought techniques of history’s most accomplished Renaissance Man — in every literal and figurative sense of the word — is still a bestseller. Almost 500 years after his death, Leonardo da Vinci is still a superstar.

58. Keep It Clean In The Hot Tub 5/24/2017

    With Memorial Day just around the corner, millions of homeowners are pulling the covers off their hot tubs, filling them up and getting ready for summertime relaxation. Hot tubs provide relaxation, ease aches and pains, relax sore muscles, or even — in the case of swim spas — work those muscles instead. 

59. An Open Letter To Michelle Obama On Water 2/14/2017

    Now that you have returned to the role of private citizen — though, admittedly you are a private citizen with millions of eyes focused on you — I want to encourage you to continue your great work promoting the health of our nation’s children. Your emphasis on exercise and nutrition, jobs and support for veterans, and education have touched millions of Americans of all ages and all backgrounds. Now it’s time to bring in the most common denominator and the first step toward good health — access to clean water.

60. Why California's Cannabis Industry Will Lead Water Innovation 1/26/2017

    For years, I’ve been standing on my deck in San Francisco, looking south to Silicon Valley for innovation in water efficiency. But I’m starting to realize that I might have been gazing in the wrong direction. Maybe I need to turn around and look north, over the spires of the Golden Gate Bridge, toward the Emerald Triangle in Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties, the hotbed of California’s newly legalized commercial cannabis production.