Over the past 10 years, DC Water has become the harbinger of the modern water utility. It’s often unconventional approach to tackling age-old problems usually elicits one of two responses from other utility professionals. The first response is one of resignation — if only I had the budget that size permits, I’d be able to do similar things. And the second is one of awe — there’s no way I have the amount of gumption to convince regulators or customers that I have a better way.

If forewarned is forearmed, then monitoring risk, resilience assessment, and emergency planning are essential to keeping water flowing in the face of surprise developments. At ACE19, Bentley Systems’ Senior Product Manager Tom Walski shared how the company’s modeling software running as a “digital twin” for water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure systems is helping utilities improve daily operation resilience, noting “a little bit of work has a lot of payback.” 

From the largest metropolitan utilities to the smallest water systems, leaks are a problem everywhere. Because it’s difficult to raise consumer prices to offset the losses, non-revenue water has a direct impact on the bottom line of municipal water systems. However, utility managers now have an opportunity to reverse the problem with advanced flow meter technology that combines multiple measurements.

A couple of weeks ago, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt called PFAS groundwater contamination “a national priority” and pledged action at an EPA national PFAS leadership summit.

Corrosion control has always been a priority for distributing safe drinking water throughout the world’s networks of pipeline. This has become all the more critical following the outrageous lead poisoning revelations in Flint, MI — an incident caused directly by corrosion of the city’s lead-based infrastructure.

It’s common to see “BPA Free” labels on water bottles and other containers, a response to consumers who have grown increasingly wary of the contaminant. However, testing for BPAs that may have found their way into drinking water sources has traditionally been cumbersome and expensive, so municipalities could be exposing their customers to unsafe levels. The good news is that newer advancements are making it easier to use existing technologies to monitor for the pollutant.

Affordability and maintainability are two of the greatest challenges small municipalities face when constructing and managing sewer infrastructure. With these challenges in mind, it’s important for small cities to choose wisely when investing in a wastewater system that needs to last for 30-60 years.

Over the past decade, there has been a considerable effort in the water sector to address industry shortcomings through collaboration. And perhaps there’s been no greater initiative to try to help water utility managers in their day-to-day and future planning than the Effective Utility Management (EUM) Initiative.

Among water treatment industry professionals, consensus is growing that small- to medium-scale decentralized desalination and wastewater treatment plants are the way forward in a water-stressed future. But governments continue to announce new water mega-infrastructure projects at an alarming rate. Because the public policy debate appears to have simply not caught up with current technology, many companies and NGOs with a focus on small- to medium-scale water treatment or renewable energy have begun to see the Caribbean as something of a new frontier.

On the banks of Puget Sound and in the shadow of Mount Rainier exists Tacoma, Washington. The city is home to approximately 211,000 residents, making it the third largest in the state of Washington. Tacoma’s vision is one focused on stewardship and resiliency, as outlined the Environmental Services Department strategic plan: “We believe everything we do supports healthy neighborhoods and a thriving Puget Sound, leaving a better Tacoma for all.”

Too many dog owners think their pets’ waste easily breaks down in nature and is helpful to plants, so they leave it on the ground. The truth is that dog poo and other pet waste is loaded with germs such as e. coli and giardia that make people sick as well as nutrients that can fuel problematic algae blooms.

Wastewater service charges vary considerably across EPA regions and States. That’s one of the key findings from the National Association of Clean Water Agencies’ (NACWA) Cost of Clean Water Index. If you live in Montana, Wyoming or the Dakotas (EPA Region 8), your average service charge of $261 a year is considerably less than the $884 your fellow Americans up in New England (EPA Region 1) are paying.  As you can imagine, much of the difference is to do with population size and geography.

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.

Lani Good, P.E., is an Asset Management Practice Leader. During her 5 years at West Yost Associates, she has specialized in Utility Asset Management. Her organization exclusively focuses on water, wastewater, and stormwater systems to ensure longevity for typical water infrastructure assets – pipes, pumps, storage and treatment plants.

Headlines in 2018 were dominated by the red tide along Florida’s Gulf Coast, which persisted for months, causing human respiratory illnesses, the deaths of dozens of Florida’s beloved dolphins and manatees, and hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tourism revenue and cleanup costs. Here are insights on how to forestall becoming the next city to make national headlines related to harmful algal blooms.

One of the great turnaround stories in the history of our nation’s water bodies is that of the Chesapeake Bay. Since 1976 when the Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) first undertook a comprehensive study of the Bay, efforts to address excessive nitrogen and phosphorous degradation of water quality have steadily improved the Bay’s complex ecosystem.

District Sales Engineer Andy Singer has spent enough time troubleshooting problems in the field that not much surprises him anymore. When it comes to dry barrel fire hydrants, though, he still gets a chuckle out of some of his more outrageous experiences. Here is his educational and entertaining take on the care and maintenance of fire hydrants, and ways to maximize a utility’s return on what potentially can be a 50+-year infrastructure investment.

For most of the United States, we’ve reached the time of year where Americans desire to maintain a perfectly green lawn starts to be tested by the warmer and dryer summer months. From the water industry’s perspective, it’s staggering just how many billions of gallons of treated water ends up being sprayed across our hallowed front and back yards in maintaining a full and aesthetically-pleasing lawn.