Insertion Valve For Live Water Main Avoids Customer Interruption The aged nature of water pipe has received a lot of coverage in the water industry press over the past few years. But little has been said about the control points throughout the distribution system, often rusted in place and no longer operating. As Chris Vazzana, President of Hydra Stop, explains in this Water Online interview, operators end up shutting down large sections of cities when a main breaks because the immediate valves are no longer...  Continue Reading...

Best Practices For Sustainable Water Management In this interview with Water Talk, Jason Carter of Arcadis, Doug Owen of Owen Water Consulting, and Ed Means of Means Consulting share survey results and workshop ideas from water operations around the globe, boiling it all down into a framework and an implementation pathway for other utilities to build innovation programs and manage ideas as critical assets within their organization.  Continue Reading...

Microbial Contamination Monitoring For Water Distribution Systems Back in 2014, Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals wrote an executive order for municipalities to boost their chlorine residuals as high as possible to burn off all biofilm and stop the outbreak of brain-eating amoeba (Naegleria fowleri) that had been detected as the cause of death in a number of individuals.  Continue Reading...

Fostering Innovation From Within Every water treatment challenge is a little different. Many companies have a variety of technologies that can be applied to meet the demands of their water utility customers. One such company would be SUEZ. Water Talk recently sat down with Adriano Vieira, Director of R&D with the SUEZ IDEAS Center, to learn more about the unique approach the Company’s North American arm is taking to innovation.  Continue Reading...

Water Tank Mixing Imperative For Water Quality Lots of work has been done over the past century on improving water quality at the treatment plant. But as Flint, MI’s water crisis served to remind us, perhaps too little focus has been directed to the distribution system itself. PAX Water Technology and UGSI Solutions are looking to change that.  Continue Reading...

Leak Detection Advancement For those unable to attend, the Internet of Things (IoT) was firmly part of the conversation at this year’s American Water Works Association’s (AWWA) Annual Convention and Exposition (ACE) in Philadelphia. If you haven’t heard the term, you’re going to hear a lot more of it in the years ahead. None more so than in the world of water distribution systems where it can provide real-time reporting to utility managers charged...  Continue Reading...

Beyond AMI: The Power Of Analytics In Water Distribution Systems With ever more sophisticated metering systems and software, utilities are racing to gain data-driven insights about their network beyond the traditional consumption metrics for billing purposes. As Christine Scorza, Senior Director of Product Management Software for Aclara explains in this Water Online interview, revenue assurance, leak detection, and even meter right-sizing have all become possible beyond billing with the advancement of...  Continue Reading...

Sizing Up The Smart Water Market Is "smart water" living up to the hype? Can there be true impact without broad implementation? Even when technologies are in place, are utilities using smart water capabilities to their fullest extent? Water Online hosted Reese Tisdale, president of Bluefield Research, to answer these tough questions.  Continue Reading...

George Hawkins On How Innovation Can Fund Infrastructure In this interview, Hawkins details some of his Washington D.C. experience, discusses utility funding as it relates to consumer rates, and explains the role of innovation in surmounting challenges.  Continue Reading...

Lessons From The Latest Water And Wastewater Rate Survey Rocky Craley of Raftelis Financial Consultants, the firm that conducted the 2016 Water and Wastewater Rate Survey along with the American Water Works Association (AWWA), discussed the takeaways of the annual survey in this edition of Water Talk.  Continue Reading...