Did you ever have a paper route or go door-to-door selling items to your neighbors for a charitable cause in your younger years? Remember the house with the big dog? Or the overgrown yard? Maybe even the dark house at the end of the lane that the spooky old woman known to all as “the witch” lived in?
Harmful algal blooms — the overgrowth of algae in water — are a major problem across the nation. Blooms occur when excess nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus), combine with sunlight, and warm temperatures in water bodies. They can cause severe, negative impacts on aquatic ecosystems, the economy, and human health.
While San Diego has a reputation for beautiful weather in a sunny seaside setting, its growing population in the southernmost area of rain-starved California is a recipe for trouble in paradise. That challenge has spurred the creation of Pure Water San Diego — a multi-phase, multi-year program with the goal of using recycled water for up to one-third of San Diego’s water supply by the year 2035.
Envision a world absent of a water crisis, an end to the threatened health and economic welfare affecting nearly 1.5 billion people due to water scarcity. Clean, safe, fresh water is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century and we are only scraping the surface on achieving public awareness. As our global population increases, access to clean water decreases; a metric with diminishing returns.
Across the country, farmers face unrelenting pressure to conserve both water and energy. From California to Texas, recent droughts and declining groundwater levels require more pumping to provide irrigation water for crops. Pumping water takes energy, as do many other precision agriculture tasks involved in running a successful farm today. This symbiotic relationship between water and energy use — often called the energy-water nexus — is taking its toll on America’s agricultural industry.
Fresh water is the most important resource for human life on earth. People can survive far longer without food than without water, and virtually all of our food sources require fresh water to grow or create.
The cities of Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin, and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa reservation are all situated at the western end of Lake Superior, along the St. Louis River where it flows into the lake.
According to population projections from the U.S. Census Bureau, millennials are expected to become the nation's largest living adult generation by 2019. 37 percent of millennials were homeowners in 2015 and this number continues to rise, making them a significant fraction of a utilities' customer base.
When water demand declines, water quality and utility budgets can suffer. When the situation arose in Akron, OH, a smart solution emerged.
If I were asked to describe the makeup of the Water Online and Water Innovations audience, I could say it’s a mix of engineers and operators focusing on clean and/or wastewater processes within municipal or industrial settings. But that wouldn’t tell the whole story, because you are much more than that — you are caretakers of our planet’s most valuable resource.
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