The microbiome refers to the genetic material of all the microbes that live on and inside the human body. Using DNA sequencing, researchers are only beginning to uncover links between the microbiome and a host of diseases, including several types of cancer, autoimmune conditions, inflammatory bowel disease, and Crohn’s disease, among others.
In many water industry applications, a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system is considered the heartbeat of the operation. As a result, many data management decisions revolve around what the SCADA system can or cannot do and how big of a deal and expense it is to change. Can’t there be a way to devise more ROI-responsive data solutions, without having to change SCADA solutions?
As with most things in life, there are those water utilities that have and those that don’t. According to the EPA, less than 3% of the 150,110 operational public water systems (PWS) in the U.S. serve more than 10,000 people. And those 4,500 systems serve 79% of the population. Not that being big means living trouble free. Many of these water authorities serve cities plagued by under investment over decades in their water systems. And yet with large rate-bases comes the means to spread the investment in modern technology across many households and water consumers.
Purchasing low-priced equipment is easy. Purchasing equipment with good lifetime value is much more difficult — especially for managers of public utilities, who are required by their procurement procedures to entertain "or equal" bids.
The key to high rate clarifiers such as inclined plate settlers is flow distribution says Tom Grubb, Regional Manager with Meurer Research. “Each inclined plate is like a miniature little sedimentation basin,” Grubb told Water Online in a recent Water Talk interview at AWWA’s ACE 2018. “To get good effluent quality, it’s critical that you have the same flow to each plate.”
No technology innovations have received as much coverage over the past year as virtual (VR) and augmented realities (AR). Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google’s Assistant have us all talking to our devices and interacting with non-humans on a regular basis.
A lot has changed over the past 15 years. Back in the early 2000s, many utilities weren’t interested in understanding what was in their water beyond the contaminant and disinfection byproduct levels they were regulated to comply with. But as Pat Whalen, President and CEO of LuminUltra, explains in this ACE 2018 Water Talk interview, a steady stream of ongoing education and the modern data storage and analytics that cloud computing provides, has developed some rabid fans eager to explore the microbiology of their water systems.
In drinking water treatment’s ongoing battle between disinfection and disinfection byproducts (DBPs), most water utility customers are oblivious to the process. One thing they do notice, however, is when their water smells or tastes bad. Here are some insights that can help water treatment plant (WTP) operators deal with their internal concerns about DBPs and residual chlorine or ammonia levels, as well as their external concerns about customer perceptions of water quality.
As the Infrastructure Asset Manager at the Western Virginia Water Authority, Jim O’Dowd has responsibility for planning, managing, direction setting, and administration of the Asset Management Program for the Authority’s water distribution and wastewater collection systems. These are made up of around 1,000 miles of sewer and 1,200 miles of water mains that serve over 200,000 people in Roanoke City, Roanoke County, Botetourt County and Franklin County, 240 miles southwest of Washington DC. Jim uses InfoAsset Manager and InfoAsset Mobile software to manage the Authority’s asset management and work order system, and InfoWorks WS Pro, IWLive Pro and InfoWorks ICM for water and sewer hydraulic modeling.
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