When we know better, we do better.

As incidents of floods increase and as the intensity of droughts deepen, water systems will need to ramp up their ability to adapt to evolving system conditions in real-time. Water systems need to become adaptive. Water systems need to become resilient.  But the...

As I read news of SCOTUS’ weakening the ability of the EPA to curb power plant emissions I could only think of the implications - directly and indirectly - on the water utility sector. I could only think of the impact and risk to our already fragile water systems. For...

How can a water system's public works director or operations manager look to the future and plan for risks? How does one, entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring clean water is provided to the residents of their region, deliver on their promise? How might they...

Most assessments of the Texas outage of 2021 point to a few factors that were responsible for the loss of power and water that hit ~4.2M Texas residents Old Infrastructure and asset degradationLack of a shared and accepted plan to address (what was an expected)...

If there’s anything we know about the way modern organizations work, it’s that the flow of information is critical. Businesses need external customer information to flow in to help them determine what their customers’ needs or issues are, so they can be addressed...

Even as carbon mitigation actions gain steam, water continues to be ignored in our climate change mitigation. While we experience climate change impacts through water - floods, droughts - the conversation never covers the impact on water quality. I won’t bury the lede...

In earlier days of software technology deployment to water utilities, vendors pushed for on-premise storage of data and technological tools (even software). Servers were deployed to give the engineers at the water utility a sense that their data was ‘secure’ and...

Drinking Water Policy Recommendations for the Biden Administration Water management is highly regulated and for good reason. When the appropriate guard rails and laws are not in place, citizens get unchecked pollution in their drinking water or overconsumption of...

In the midst of the worst climate change-induced disaster in the US state of Texas, we are resorting to doing the things we seem to be most adept at doing these days; blaming, shaming and, misinforming. Instead of rushing to provide help and assistance to the people...

To say 2020 brought change to the water sector is an understatement. Increased adoption of technology, further attrition in the technician and engineer ranks, new processes and decreased revenue as a result of COVID. At the beginning of Q2 2020, we wrote about our...

In walking, eating lunch with, and talking to water system managers and operators there is one thing that has come to the surface as the real problem they have. Actually, it became more obvious because of how difficult it is to get to talk to water system operators...

It is not news to anyone who is involved in the utility industry that the workforce is retiring at a rate that the utility is unable to replace. In the water industry, it is projected that 30% of the workforce will be retiring over the next few years. According...

Say what you will, and I’m not discussing the politics of this situation we find ourselves in with the pandemic, the prevailing facts suggest that we did not have a plan to fight COVID19. Or any pandemic. Those same facts also suggest that our systems – public health,...

In capturing data within the distribution edge of water utilities, through sensors or probes, some of the difficulties we hear from operations folk at these utilities include: The data transmission issues that lead to lost data or incomplete data which impacts the...

As the sources of water continue to become scarce - especially with the rise in populations, urban growth and climate change - the water utility's role in ensuring people get potable water becomes ever more critical. Because, fundamentally, the water provision in...