When we know better, we do better.
What the SCOTUS Decision on EPA Means for Clean Water
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...
What We Learned at AWWA’s ACE22 Conference
Conference season over the last few months was revealing both for the lessons learned from conversations with water industry professionals and for how relieved everyone in the industry seemed to be at having live events once again. While COVID-related safety protocols...
How to forecast the future as a water utility executive
How can the public works director or the operations manager of a water system look at the future and plan for risks? How does one, saddled with the responsibility of ensuring clean potable water is provided to residents of their region, look to the future and identify...
Climate Change + Poor Infrastructure + Failure to Plan = Disasters
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)...
The problem with data silos in water utilities and how Varuna solves it
If there is anything we know about the way business or services work nowadays, it is that the flow of information is critical. The flow of external information about the customers helps organizations to determine what the needs or issues of their customers are, and...
Climate Change Is Worsening Our Water Quality.
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...
Why On-Premise Solutions No Longer Make Sense For Water Systems
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...
Biden’s Splashing The Cash. Here’s How We Spend It To Secure Water’s Future.
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...
Climate Change + Poor Infrastructure + Failure to Plan = Disasters
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...
What Are The (non-COVID) Changes Impacting Drinking Water Systems?
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...
Who Has Time To Improve Water Quality?
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...
An Alternative Approach to Dealing with the Retiring 30% of the Water Workforce
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...
Pandemics, Plans, Perceptions
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,...
The (Near) Future of Water
COVID Highlights Some Issues There are a few issues that water systems are having to deal with in the midst of the COVID pandemic. These issues aren’t particularly new, COVID19 has just highlighted difficulties the industry was already facing and might have been...
Is There a Role for 5G in the Water Utility Industry?
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...
How To Forecast The Future As A Water Utility Executive?
How can the public works director or the operations manager look at the future? How does one, saddled with the responsibility of ensuring clean potable water is provided to residents of their region, look to the future and identify the things that might change to...
Building the Water Utility of the Future
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...