Water and Wastewater Blog

Another Fabulous Tool from Apple and a Book that Wants You to Unlock Your Own Fabulous Works

Last week, two possibly world-changing launches took place: On Tuesday Seth Godin introduced his latest book Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? The next day Apple introduced the iPad.

Most observers instantly declared both fabulous, though a few found fault with some iPad details. You’d have to be on an extended trip to another planet to miss the news of Apple’s iPad, the long-anticipated tablet computer that may do to book, magazine and newspaper publishing what iTunes did to the music business.

The buzz on Seth’s new book is nearly as intense in the blogging/marketing world he inhabits, but the news may have missed those beyond that world.

Seth Godin is a prolific writer with ten books and one of the longest-running, most-read and most influential blogs of all time. Many are already declaring Linchpin the most important book Godin has written, that it will be life changing for those who read it and world changing for the works that ensue.

This post is not a book review, or a review of Apple’s latest cool technology. It’s an alert. It’s a sign of new possibilities in the midst of all our angst over economies and policies and things that may blow up with little or no warning and we’re standing too close.

This week Steve Jobs and Apple demonstrated once again that we can still invent cool tools that are fun to use, and in the process transform whole industries. And this week Seth Godin introduced us to a Manifesto of Fabulous: a guide, a map and an energizer for how each one of us, individually and collectively can make our own fabulous things.

You can find a hint of what was to come in his new book in this brief post from his blog dated November 8, 2009. It’s titled simply "Fabulous"

This is so cool: because we only look at things we want to look at, only talk about things worth talking about, the amount of fabulous in the world continues to rise exponentially.

Even though we're at the tail end of the great recession, think about all the cool stuff in your life. Not just stuff you can buy, but experiences, works of art, innovations of all kinds... the bar has been raised for what you need to do to be noticed, and the market is responding.

Not only do I notice more fabulous, but it sure seems as though the creators of it are more engaged, dedicated and yes, joyful, than I can remember. If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do work that matters, this is it. You can't say, "but I need to make a fortune instead," because that's not happening right now. So you might as well join the people who can say, "I love doing this."

Fabulous Infrastructure and Machines
There's a lot of talk of our transformation from an Industrial Age to a Digital Age. In this post-industrial era, some suppose there's little change or innovation to be found when it comes to engineering water or wastewater projects, or the industrial equipment that's used in building and running those installations.

Yet for those who bother to look there's a wealth of innovation—of fabulous people designing and building fabulous equipment:

I’ve seen fabulous digital weighing technologies designed specifically for process control. These Smart Force Transducers are developed and manufactured in Niederlenz, Switzerland, and they are just one example of how digital instruments are applied in industrial equipment.
In an article on how innovation turbo-charges industrial companies I profiled Jim Foley in Pitman, NJ, who headed the team that developed a new material flow aid for gravimetric feeders.
Fabulous water projects have a long and storied history, the evidence of which can be seen in places like Pont du Gard, France, where a Roman era aqueduct from 19 BC still stands. The city of Rome itself had eleven aqueducts constructed over a period of 500 years.
Philadelphia's Fairmount Water Works was the site of the world's first high-pressure steam engine. The project got its start in 1790 when Ben Franklin left the city 100,000 pounds to develop an abundant supply of water.In 1805 Philadelphia's Watering Committee began work on a collection of Federal and Greek revival buildings that housed steam engines and later water wheels and turbines powered by the Schuylkill river. The buildings were surrounded by formal gardens, attracting tourists, painters and photographers from around the world. After a visit from England in 1842, Charles Dickens wrote, "In Philadelphia there is a place that is wondrous to behold, and that is the Philadelphia Waterworks."

The point of these examples is that people have been creating every day things filled with fabulous ideas and designs for a very long time. Today there are more people than ever who dare to reach beyond the common to set new standards in their fields. Godin thinks a new wave is coming that will sweep away today's other trend, the one taking us toward the age of the commodity. Those who buy and read Linchpin may find themselves among those riding at the top of this wave. He says that would be fabulous.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Read this Blog and Boost Your Brain Power

Web surfing may be improving your mind in more ways than you expected. UCLA scientists have announced results of a study in which they found, according to the University's Rachel Champeau, "middle-aged and older adults with little Internet experience were able to trigger key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning after just one week of surfing the Web."

The findings were presented at the 2009 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. According to Champeau, "Research has shown that mental stimulation similar to that which occurs in individuals who frequently use the Internet may affect the efficiency of cognitive processing and alter the way the brain encodes new information."

While the study focused on an older population, the researchers hope to address the impact of the Internet on younger individuals in future studies. Their goal is to identify aspects of online searching that generate the greatest levels of brain activation.

In this latest study 24 "neurologically normal volunteers" were selected between the ages of 55 and 78. Prior to the study, half the participants used the Internet daily, while the other half had very little experience. Age, educational level and gender were similar among all participants.

Study participants performed Web searches while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which recorded subtle brain-circuitry changes experienced while browsing. After the initial brain scan, participants went home and conducted Internet searches one hour a day for a total of seven days over a two-week period.

In the first scan, participants with little Internet experience demonstrated brain activity in regions controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities. A second brain scan of the same participants, after they had accomplished their Internet searches at home, demonstrated activation of these same regions, plus additional areas of the brain important for working memory and decision-making.

Researchers concluded that, "after Internet training at home, participants with minimal online experience displayed brain activation patterns very similar to those seen in the group of savvy Internet users — after just a brief period of time."

Prior research by the UCLA group found online search activity resulted in more than a twofold increase in brain activation for those with prior browsing knowledge, compared with those with little Internet experience. If you've been lagging in your own Internet searching, there's still hope: The new UCLA research suggests it may take just a few days for those with minimal experience to match the activity levels of those with years of experience. If you have a co-worker or supervisor who seems to be falling behind in their Internet use, you might do their brains a favor by forwarding this article to them!

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Use Innovation to Turbo-Charge Your Organization

In "3 Tips for Becoming an Energizing Team Member" I discussed Rosabeth Moss Kanter's take on how the best leaders lead with positive energy. I recently came across research that suggests creativity and innovation may be an organization's most important source of positive energy.

Harvard Business Review contributing editor Bronwyn Fryer posted this interview "How Do Innovators Think? " with Professors Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen. In the Q&A interview the professors discuss the results of a six-year study in which they surveyed 3,000 creative executives and conducted an additional 500 individual interviews to discover how "Innovators' DNA" works.

The study identified five "discovery skills" that distinguish innovative leaders from all the rest:

Associating: "a cognitive skill that allows creative people to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas."
Questioning: "an ability to ask 'what if', 'why', and 'why not' questions that challenge the status quo and open up the bigger picture."
Observation: "the ability to closely observe details, particularly the details of people's behavior."
Experimentation: innovators "are always trying on new experiences and exploring new worlds."
Networking: innovative leaders "are really good at networking with smart people who have little in common with them, but from whom they can learn"

I think one of the profound discoveries the professors made was that more people possess these skills than we recognize. Professor Dyer said, "We think there are far more discovery driven people in companies than anyone realizes. We've found that 15% of executives are deeply innovative, meaning they've invented a new product or started an innovative venture. But the problem is that even the most creative people are often careful about asking questions for fear of looking stupid, or because they know the organization won't value it."

We Need to Celebrate Invention and Innovation
One of the unanticipated satisfactions I discovered in moving from political Washington to industrial South Jersey was finding my office across the hall from K-Tron's R&D department. You don't have to be a technology junkie to feel the positive energy coming from a creative group of engineers like this. K-Tron is a company where a lot of its positive energy has started with invention. In fact, the company wouldn't exist as it does today if it hadn't introduced the world's first digital weigh belt feeder in 1972.

I asked my long-time office neighbor Jim Foley to describe his process of discovery as he spearheaded one of the latest innovations to come out of the K-Tron R&D department, the new Acti-Flow material flow aid for gravimetric feeders. Getting cohesive or other difficult materials to flow from a hopper is an age-old problem for all process industries. The consequences of bridging or ratholing are especially costly in continuous feeding applications where reduced or interrupted flow can degrade product quality and even halt the process.

Before Acti-Flow, mechanical agitation provided the most reliable way to deal with material that didn't easily flow from a loss-in-weight feeder hopper. Mechanical agitation works but needs secondary motors, gear boxes, added headroom, and presents additional cleaning challenges. These downsides led Foley and his staff to ask if there is a better way.

"Vibrating the hopper is another option everyone's known about for a long time," Foley explained. "We know vibration is good. The problem is that too much vibration is bad. It compacts the material and actually promotes bridging and ratholing. Since constant vibration created more trouble than it solved, the best you could do with it was wait for a mass flow alarm and then turn on the vibrator. "

Making Smart Vibrations
It's a fascinating story, which I'll save for another time, of how Foley and his R&D engineers in Pitman, NJ and Niederlenz, Switzerland took a completely fresh look at all the ways vibration might be employed to make difficult material flow. There were a number of breakthroughs the team discovered.

The most important innovation, and the one that has lead to a pending patent, was the idea that the loss-in-weight controller could control and fine-tune how the vibrator (or any other device) interacts with the feeding system. "It's only because our loss-in-weight algorithm is so smart," Foley said, "that we can make vibration work with us--not against us."

As a result of having a smart controller to manage the vibration, Acti-Flow is able to vibrate continuously at a low-level, optimum amplitude and frequency that prevents bridging and ratholing. "The controller changes the amplitude all the time," Foley said "When material is moving well it runs at the lowest possible level of vibration." If the controller senses a change, it adjusts the vibration right away before it becomes a problem.

"That's the beauty of it," Foley said. "It's a preventive strike: it lets you act, not react. "

Innovation Gives Life to Organizations
Invention and innovation keep a company engaged with its customers. It gives employees renewed purpose. It keeps sales people excited about their products and services. It gives existing customers and potential new customers confidence that they're dealing with a company that keeps getting better.

If it's a really cool design, or a striking innovation, invention gives us pleasure in simply perceiving the thing itself. Finally, invention gives us all hope in the future.

The Personal Innovation Imperative
You don't have to be an R&D engineer to be an inventor. You don't have to work for an engineering-oriented company to need invention. The truth is, in a global networked world where continuous innovation is sweeping across all industries, all the time, we all have to be innovators. The most important innovation we have to work on is ourselves.

What are you doing to reinvent yourself today?

3 Tips for Becoming an Energizing Team Member

It's not just the Energizer Bunny that needs to keep things going with its never-quit energy. According to Harvard's business professor and chronicler of leadership and innovation, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, becoming an energizer (Harvard Business Blog) is an essential leadership skill.

Kanter's article on leadership and personal effectiveness is aimed at organization leaders, but the benefits of positive energy apply equally to anyone who has a role on a group or team. That covers just about all of us, and I think it applies particularly well to those on engineering teams or technical projects. Kanter writes:

"Some people become leaders no matter what their chosen path because their positive energy is so uplifting. Even in tough times, they always find a way. They seem to live life on their own terms even when having to comply with someone else's requirements…. Their energy makes them magnets attracting other people…. [Energy] is a form of power available to anyone in any circumstances. While inspiration is a long-term proposition, energy is necessary on a daily basis, just to keep going."

Kanter cites three key characteristics of people who are energizers:

1. A relentless focus on the bright side. "Energizers find the positive and run with it," she writes.

I don't think it's possible to be a creative pessimist. When I see engineers create new solutions to material handling problems, whether it's a whole new concept in feeder technology or a new take on an old problem such as inducing better material flow from a material that doesn't want to flow, I find there's a creative energy and excitement in the process that flows through the entire organization.

2. Redefining negatives as positives. Kanter writes, "Energizers are can-do people. They do not like to stay in negative territory, even when there are things that are genuinely depressing…. 'Positive thinking' and 'counting blessings' can sound like naïve cliches. But energizers are not fools…. Studies show that optimists are more likely to listen to negative information than pessimists, because they think they can do something about it."

Consider the story we reported early this year on the overwhelming problems faced in making clean water available to some of the poorest and most dangerous communities in Haiti. Those who wanted to help faced as depressing a situation as can be imagined, and yet a small non-profit organization in Washington, DC, with the help of equipment designed and manufactured by Norweco, installed and trained local teams to use and maintain low-tech chlorinators that have brought safe drinking water to 23 of the most depressed neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince.

3. Fast response time. Kanter holds, "Energizers don't dawdle. Energizers don't tell you all the reasons something can't be done. They just get to it…. They are very responsive to emails or phone calls, even if the fast response is that they can't respond yet…. Because they are so responsive, others go to them for information or connections. In the process, energizers get more information and a bigger personal network, which are the assets necessary for success."

The days of the lone scientist or engineer working solo for the big breakthrough are largely behind us. Today, technical solutions require technical teams with a variety of skills and knowledge. The larger your network of skilled people who know and support what you're working on, the greater you chances of success.

Kanter concludes, "The nice thing about this form of energy is that it is potentially abundant, renewable, and free. The only requirements for energizers are that they stay active, positive, responsive, and on mission."

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Make Your Nominations Here for Water and Waste Water's Engineering Rock Stars

Last night I saw Ajay Bhatt on TV for the first time. He's Intel's latest "rock star" in their "Sponsors of Tomorrow" marketing campaign.

You can see Bhatt's rock idol video here. He is an Intel fellow and the co-inventor of USB, today's standard for connecting devices to computers.

Bhatt is a good sport in playing what must have been an uncomfortable video role. But this send up of modern fan adulation does more than bring attention to one of Intel's many stellar engineers.

Intel's rock star video serves as a reminder that real people make the things that make the world a little better. And while we can't elevate every engineer--or engineering team--to the star status they deserve for their innovations, we can at least share the names of the ones we know of.

Announcing the Water and Waste Water Engineering Star Quest
So here's your chance to join in the nomination of our own process industry rock stars. You can nominate historical figures or contemporaries. To help get you started, here are some individuals who might qualify for star status:

Joseph Priestly (1733 – 1804): Water and Wastewater dot com publisher Joe Taylor nominated Joseph Priestly because "he's the guy who figured out oxygen and gases."

Priestly actually received a rock star's welcome when he emigrated from England to the United States in 1794. But the adulation was more for his outspoken support of the new republic than his discovery of oxygen.

According to the Chemical Heritage website, Priestly had been encouraged by Benjamin Franklin, when the later was in London, to complete his first scientific work, The History of Electricity (1767). Priestly went on to publish more than 150 works. In addition to his scientific research he was a noted English theologian, natural philosopher, educator, and political theorist.

While Priestly is credited with the discovery of oxygen (he called it "dephlogisticated air"), Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Antoine Lavoisier also hold claim to the discovery. Priestly wrote six volumes on Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air.

In Birmingham, England Priestly joined the Lunar Society, a group of manufacturers, inventors, and natural philosophers who met monthly to discuss their work. The group included manufacturer Matthew Boulton, chemist and geologist James Keir, inventor and engineer James Watt, and botanist, chemist, and geologist William Withering.

Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC): Going even further back in history, my top choice for engineering rock star is Archimedes whose breakthrough screw design is still used for pumping water and in bulk material handling. It's the basis for the screw feeder, by far the most commonly used volumetric or gravimetric feeder found today. You can find the Archimedes screw pumping and metering liquids and bulk solids in virtually every industry.

Archimedes wrote the earliest known explanation of the principle involved in the lever. He is said to have remarked, "Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth."

Archimedes designed block-and-tackle pulley systems, allowing sailors to use the principle of leverage to lift objects that would otherwise have been too heavy to move. He is also credited with improving the power and accuracy of the catapult. During the First Punic War he invented the first odometer. As a cart outfitted with the odometer moved forward, a gear mechanism dropped a ball into a container upon each mile traveled.

Archimedes was born, lived and died in the Greek city-state of Syracuse, in Sicily. Like all the early innovators, he was a generalist and is known as a Greek mathematician, physicist, inventor, and astronomer. And he was most definitely an engineer. "His name is inextricably associated with the genesis of engineering in ancient Greece," according to this profile on the website of the Technology Museum & Science Center in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Gordon E. Moore (1929 - ): Gordon E. Moore didn't invent the computer, and he can't take full credit for the microprocessor, though he and Intel co-founder Robert Noyce certainly gave it a hand. Over the years, his Intel engineers have taken a commanding lead in development of the computer chip that has become the backbone of countless products and the transformer of nearly every business and industry.

The thing that makes Moore stand out from all the others is his early recognition of just how big this chip revolution would be. In 1965, his Moore's Law predicted the trajectory of how many transistors could be placed on a computer chip. The time frame has stretched from a year, to 18 months to two years as the size and complexity of the chips have grown, but the law has held for more than 40 years. Each new generation of chips has doubled the computing power of the previous chips. As a result computing costs have been cut in half every one to two years, while speed and computational capacity have grown exponentially.

The impact of the microprocessor on every industry cannot be overstated. Many modern processes simply would not be possible without today's digital controls and sensors. Just to take one example, highly accurate loss-in-weight and weigh belt feeders wouldn't be so accurate without their microprocessor controls. Digital weighing technology simply isn't possible without their onboard microprocessors.

Moore earned a bachelor's in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1950 and a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1954. For those who might say he's a chemist or a business manager, not an engineer, it should be noted that Moore is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Engineers. He serves on the board of trustees of the California Institute of Technology and received the National Medal of Technology in 1990 and the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 2002.

Who Are Your Engineering Stars?
So now it's your chance to nominate our own engineering rock stars. They may be historical figures whose work we continue to build upon today. Or you may want to nominate a contemporary like Ajay Bhatt whose work is moving us toward tomorrow. Post your comment here, or send an email to don@waterandwastewater.com with the subject line Engineering Stars.

Don Dunnington
Blog moderator

Water-security: Should urban water use, like rural water use, be capped?

“What’s good for the goose, is good for the gander" – a proverb of unknown origin.

The so-called cap on surface water use in the Murray-Darling Basin is widely acclaimed as a success. This cap is dynamic and designed to limit the amount of surface water that may be taken from rivers in the each part of the Basin.

The cap’s main purpose is to keep water use and development within an agreed limit and maintain a degree of supply reliability at the individual level. If someone wants access to more water than is currently allocated to them, someone else must agree to take less water. In rural areas, this is achieved primarily by letting people trade water on a temporary or permanent basis.

Contrast this with the situation found in most urban water supply systems. Even when severe water restrictions are in place, if someone wants to open up a new business or build a new house, they are allowed to do so. As a direct result, the reliability of every else’s water supply is eroded.

The reality is that the construction of a new house or the establishment of a new factory is seen as so important that it should be allowed to proceed regardless of its impact on everyone else lifestyle and property.

Exploring this idea, participants at the recent Australian Davos Connection Infrastructure 21 Conference proposed that urban people, like their rural cousins, should be required to operate under a cap.

Would it make sense to impose a cap on urban water users? What would happen if city planners were not allowed to grant building approval for a house, factory or shop until adequate water had either been secured or the applicant had made arrangements to off-set the impact of “their” proposed development on all other water users and a city’s environment?

A catchment cap

In Australia, most urban water is sourced from dams, rivers and, in cities like Perth, also from groundwater. In order to impose a cap on water use in a city, the first step would be to work out how much water is needed to keep a minimum flow through the city’s rivers and streams and to cover evaporative losses. The remaining water would then be available for sharing between the environment and all users. In effect, the city would be given an entitlement to a share – a right to a proportion - of inflows after enough water had been put aside to keep the system functioning. Under such a regime, the city’s right to access water in the catchments that supply it would be capped. Pragmatically, this amount of water would be converted into a number of house equivalents.

If the amount of water that a city could take from its catchment was capped and supplies were short, attention would quickly shift to the supply and demand sides of urban water management.

Alternative supplies

On the supply side, one would expect the city’s water-supply managers to pursue groundwater development, stormwater management, waste water treatment, recycling options and the purchase of water from irrigators. Climate-independent opportunities like desalination might be explored. Whenever additional supplies were secured, the resultant increase in the number of house equivalents would be assessed and added to the cap. We suspect water-supply managers might decide to call the resultant number of household equivalents of water “available” the city’s “water-security cap.”

One would expect that the water-security cap would account for the amount of water which, following use, was returned to the system. No actions that reduce the amount of water already allocated to downstream users and or the environment would be allowed – unless, of course, there are no downstream users and downstream impacts from return flows on the environment are negative.

Reliability

No doubt, a debate about the potential effects of adverse climate change on expected mean water-supply-system reliability would soon emerge. We expect that ultimately, the water-supply potential of a city’s catchments would be defined using something like a 10 year moving average of inflows. This would mean that as it got drier, the water-security cap would start to come down.

Demand

Having exhausted cheap supply-side options, attention could then move to the demand side of the equation. Water requirements for each type of house and business would have to be defined and minimum reliability standards set for them. The impact of the current constellation of pricing, regulatory and other policy arrangements would need to be considered. Each standard would then be multiplied by the number of houses and businesses that exist to determine how much water supply infrastructure was needed by the city.

A typical minimum standard might require each and every house to have unrestricted access to a reasonable amount of water for the next 100 years under worst-case climate change assumptions. No more than 2 years of water restrictions in 100 years could be defined as a reasonable standard.

So far, these arguments are fairly traditional. Urban water-supply utilities routinely prepare such analyses and use them, coupled with growth projections, to argue for funding in order for them to invest in water supply-side augmentation. Cities that grow need more water!

Making the cap fit

The main difference between a city with a formal water-security cap and the traditional approach is the cap’s commitment to stop development from eroding urban water-security. Whenever the water-security cap is reached, a pre-defined water-security trigger would go off. Further development would be possible if and only if, supplies are augmented or a water-security off-setting investment is made.

In order to ensure enforcement, a truly independent water-security commissioner would need to be appointed and required to inform the city when it was about to breach its cap. An array of early warning triggers would be appropriate. As suggested in Droplet 10, the Commissioner could be empowered to encourage timely investment by introducing scarcity pricing and requiring the money collected to be used to augment water-supply security immediately. The Commissioner might also decide to relax third-party access rules and increase opportunities for private firms to compete with traditional water suppliers.

As the situation declined, all developers would come under massive pressure to invest and lobby to ensure that water-security was maintained at the household level and so that development would not stop.

Offset arrangements

As set out in Droplet 5, offset arrangements are used in the state of Arizona in the United States. In that part of the world, no house may be sold without a statement as to whether or not its water supply is sufficient to supply it for the next 100 years. When considering the best way to source water for a new subdivision, some Arizonan developers have financed groundwater recharge schemes and others have paid for the conversion of single-flush toilets to dual-flush toilets. In a few cases, we understand that factories have been approached to see if they would sell their water and move to another location. The other option, which such actions encourage, is to build houses that demand less water.

Thinking further about the nature of the scarcity signal given, we expect that cities would set up a water-security credit banking system and encourage developers to bank unused water-security credits.

Setting the first water-security cap

We recognise that most governments would probably not be prepared to put in place such a regime until a water-security buffer had been established. In cities where water restrictions are still in place, the first impact of a decision to implement a water-security cap would be a number of catch-up investments. Once these catch-up investments had been made, it would be interesting to see if a government would be prepared to impose the discipline that a water-security cap creates on future governments.

Where to from here?
As has been demonstrated in rural areas, the introduction of a water-security cap can be expected to bring stronger investment and supply management disciplines to a city. As summarised in a recent report to the National Water Commission, some Australian cities already operate under a catchment cap but, as yet, none have gone as far as to undertake not to allow developments that erode water reliability at the household or business level.

Assuming that water-security caps are well implemented, their introduction would create strong incentives for existing water users to search for and profit from increasing water-use efficiency and search for new ways to supply water to the city. If catchment caps of the type described here were applied to a city, then the incentive to retrofit a city’s existing infrastructure would be much stronger than it currently is.

Should your city be prepared to subject itself to the discipline of a water security cap? Once sufficient catch-up investments have been made, most of the pressure would fall on future governments. We think the idea is worth careful consideration. As part of this process, someone would have to work out what water-security standards to put in place. Development of national urban water-security guidelines would be a good start.

Mike Young
The Environment Institute at the University of Adelaide,

Jim McColl
CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems

Will Investors Find Gold in Water Incorporated?

Steve Hoffmann, founder of WaterTech Capital, a private investment company focused on the water industry, is betting water will become the world's most precious resource in the near future.

You can read all about his rationale for investing in what you might call "Water Incorporated" in his new book, Planet Water: Investing in the World's Most Valuable Resource. The book was reviewed recently in The Wall Street Journal (May 27, 2009) by Roger Bate, who concedes Hoffmann is "a financier, not a writer" but reading the book "might well guide [you to] some very satisfactory investments."

Bate writes, "Mr. Hoffmann does an able job of laying out the basics of water scarcity and delivery, and he presents a persuasive case for water's looming importance, rivaling oil as the most important commodity this century.... [However] what's of interest in Planet Water is Mr. Hoffmann's advice about water as an investment opportunity."

Bate particularly likes how Hoffmann gets into the specifics of the companies and technologies that will prosper in an era of precious water:

"When he describes the appalling water losses from leaking pipes, for instance, he turns the discussion to the methods being employed to find holes in piping, such as ‘ultrasonic transducers, cable-based sensors, digital signal processing, ground-penetrating radar, thermography, and advanced software tools.' A savvy investor, he says, would examine this sector of the water economy."

In his book Hoffman sees water utilities, largely owned by local governments in the U.S., turning to private investment to fund upgrades of ancient infrastructure and pay for new technologies to improve water quality or process otherwise undrinkable water.

Hoffman also shows up in Businessweek's "Water: A Rising Tide of Smart Investing Plays" by David Bogoslaw (April 23, 2009). Bogoslaw writes:

"There is growing recognition that this resource—which has no substitute—may turn out to be the hot commodity of the 21st century, much as oil has been for much of the past century.

"The higher value ascribed to water has less to do with depletion and scarcity than cost. While there's as much water on the planet as there has ever been, cheap water is in short supply…. What remains are more expensive sources of water—from oceans, groundwater, or reclaimed used water—which require either desalination, chemical disinfectants, or other processes to be made suitable for drinking."

Bogoslaw quotes experts who see water prices in The U.S. doubling or tripling over the next few years. Even starting at water's current bargain price in most of the U.S., this level of increase may attract more private investment. He cites other factors favoring water sector privatization around the world, despite the trend toward more central government intervention, as exemplified by the recent bailouts of the financial sector and the auto industry:

Higher water purity standards, not just for human consumption but for industries such as semiconductor manufacture
Costs of repairing infrastructure
Cost of providing more clean water
The downturn of the U.S. housing market, which has eroded the local tax base

Bogoslaw writes that a backlash against privatization will likely intensify. "Still, there's growing recognition of the need for further market-oriented solutions, since people lack sufficient motivation to use water more efficiently unless they're paying more for it." He cites Steve Hoffman and his new book's prediction that we will see companies emerging "that are dedicated to resolving water challenges."

In his book Hoffman anticipates that over time increased mergers and acquisitions will have to occur. "Customer demands for comprehensive, cost-effective solutions discourage a segmented industry structure," he writes.

Hoffman says that companies focused on instrumentation, regulatory compliance monitoring, membrane manufacturing, pumps, and environmental remediation will be among those consolidating in the future.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Water for Power: Report Says Southeast US Could Save Water by Saving Energy

Water and Wastewater dot com publisher Joe Taylor sent me a news release from the World Resources Institute suggesting that the stress on water supplies in the Southeast United States could be relieved through greater energy and water conservation.

Their newly released report, "Water for Watts," provides this chart of water use, based on U.S. Geological Survey data that shows about 65 percent--nearly 40 billion gallons of water--is withdrawn each day for thermoelectric power in the Southeast United States.

Since so much fresh water in the Southeast goes to feeding power generation boilers, the report suggests that reducing energy demand would also reduce water demand.

"Reducing electricity demands is not only critical to addressing our energy challenges, but also to meeting regional water needs," said Ben Taube, executive director at the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance and a co-author of the new report. "Lawmakers at the federal, state, and local levels should consider policies that create incentives for the efficient use of both water and energy, especially in light of recent droughts."

I checked with an application engineer at Pennsylvania Crusher, which provides coal crushers to about 80 percent of all the coal fired utilities in the US. He confirmed that nearly all older power plants use once-through systems that take water from a river or lake, or even the ocean, to use for cooling and then discharge heated water back into the same water system.

The "Water for Watts" news item didn’t address how much of the 40 billion gallons withdrawn daily by Southeastern utilities is returned. Whatever their net water use, once-through systems do have significant impacts on local aquatic environments, such as the fish and fish larvae caught in the water uptake and the impact of discharged heated water.

Closed-cycle cooling systems use up to 98 percent less water than once-through systems. In closed-cycle systems, cooling water is pumped through the power plant’s condenser and then through cooling towers. New power plants generally are required to have closed-cycle cooling systems. Older plants still using once-through systems might be required to convert to closed-cycle cooling when their water permits are up for renewal.

As the report points out, water availability has become a source of conflict between states in the Southeast. Alabama, Florida, and Georgia have fought over control of the Apalachicola / Chattahoochee / Flint River Basin and similar issues arose in North and South Carolina over the Catawba River.

The authors project that population growth in the Southeast could lead to a 30 percent increase in thermoelectric power generation by 2025: "Without policy action to encourage efficiency and water-efficient power production, this higher electricity demand could further exacerbate water scarcity problems."

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

A Cultural Revolution

We must de-fossilise the way we think, live and act – in both senses of the word if we are to meet the challenges of climate change. These were the thoughts of Professor Sir David King, former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, speaking at CIWEM’s Annual Conference on 30th April 2009.

Sir David urged his audience of politicians, policy makers, environmental practitioners and academics to move away from technofix solutions and enter into a state of knowledge that recognises how the carousel of our aspirational lifestyles, relentless development and unsustainable population growth have driven many of the challenges we now face.

We have effectively switched off the next ice age and face risks to our environment, biodiversity, health and education, energy supply and security, water resources and food production. We must stimulate a cultural revolution, with revised priorities, innovative thinking and more sensitivity to our environment if we are to achieve a sustainable and fairer world.

Sir David’s hard-hitting message under-pinned the two day conference, with a mixture of keynote addresses from Lord Chris Smith (EA), Philip Fletcher CBE (OFWAT), Chris West (UKCIP) and Pamela Taylor (Water UK), multi-media presentations, case studies and exhibitions examining how we can create a holistic approach to the way we manage water and our environment.

Sessions included Flood Risk Management; Technical Issues in Achieving a Sustainable Water Industry; Water Resources and Integrated Catchment Management; and Climate Change and Sustainability, with papers covering sustainable development, climate change, river basin management, water management, flood risk management, and the integration of the arts, creativity and innovation within environmental projects.

CIWEM Executive Director, Nick Reeves, said, “At last, the idea that technofix solutions alone won’t address the climate change challenge, is beginning to sink in. Eminent professionals across all parts of environmental policy and practice are coming to share the view that our best chance for a truly sustainable future is through behaviour change and a cap on harmful growth and consumption. This message must be translated to the rest of the population with proportionate action from governments and our political leaders. CIWEM’s Annual Conference was certainly a step in the right direction.”

by Emily Doyle
Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management
http://www.ciwem.org/

Water and Wastewater Ranked 10th in Top 50 Recession Proof Industries

At the Resume Bear, a blog for job seekers, a recent article listed Water and sewage as number 10 of the top 50 recession-proof industries.

According to the article the water and waste water industry experienced 4%, 2%, and 8% growth in the 1990, 2001, and 2007 recessions, based on US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"Like eating and pet care, sewage use is more or less constant regardless of the current economic state. In fact, there is reason to believe sewage use may actually increase during recessions. When people are laid off, it stands to reason that they are spending more time at home, using their own restrooms and water supplies rather than those of their employers."

You can see Part 2 here of those top 50 recession-proof industries, which lists numbers 26-50. Those interested in finding a career in the water and waste water industry can look right here on waterandwastewater.com's job board where you'll find more than a thousand entries.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Geometrica Uses Wiki to Implement ISO 9001 Quality System

While blogs and social sharing sites have gotten most of the media attention when it comes to the newer Web 2.0 applications, Wikis may have more practical application for business.

A good example was recently brought to our attention by Gerardo Méndez, the quality manager at Geometrica, builders of large column-free enclosures based on efficient geometric shapes. The company has posted an article that narrates their journey to ISO 9001 certification and describes how a wiki can actually help not only to comply with ISO's requirements, but to capture volumes of tacit knowledge in an organization and manage it effectively.

Geometrica has its headquarters in Houston, Texas and its main plant in Monterrey, Mexico. Through seventeen years, the organization has provided affordable and environmentally-friendly dome and space frame structures worldwide.

Don Dunnington
Moderator

CEO urges infrastructure investments that deliver jobs

Len C. Rodman, Chairman, President and CEO of Black & Veatch, said today that stimulus funding in energy, transportation and water infrastructure will provide the greatest returns in achieving U.S. economic recovery, job growth, greater efficiency and productivity.

In a column issued today, Rodman stated that longer-term investments in foundational infrastructure are needed to provide a more stable base of employment and sustainable benefits. The column “Spending Should Target Infrastructure That Repays Massive Investment” is available, click link.

“The goal of investing in the nation’s infrastructure as part of the economic recovery deserves widespread support and quick action,” Rodman said. “And we must look beyond simple U.S. roads and bridge infrastructure investments if we are to realize a wide-ranging and sustainable economic rejuvenation.”

In the column, Rodman explains how funding in such sectors as mass transit, railroads, energy and water not only helps jump-start and sustain the U.S. economy, but also leads to improvements in efficiency and better utilization of vital infrastructure. In addition, Rodman advises that such investments will bolster the basic construction industry as well as technology and manufacturing industries where the use of equipment that supports these needs drives a much wider base of the economy.

“In the long-run it’s critical that the country gain competitive advantages that are part of the solution to repay the massive debt we are incurring,” Rodman said.

Len C. Rodman
Black & Veatch
http://www.bv.com/

Can you afford not to use "Predictive Maintenance" for water and wastewater assets?

As asset management of wastewater collection systems and water supply systems has become more important, every utility wants to know the state of their assets.

For some types of assets, making the assesment is very easy - although it might be a sobering one. For example, the assessment of pipes and wells - the civil infrastructure that makes up a significant proportion of the utility's asset base. It's not so hard to figure out whether this asset class needs replacement, even though there is some work in the investigation.

The problem for wastewater utilities is that often the pipe network is 100 years old and so corroded that the whole pipe network needs replacement -and it's the largest asset class in terms of replacement value.

Pumps, Motors and Control Systems

But what about pumps and motors - and control systems?

The question "How do you maintain pumps and motors?" strikes at the heart of this problem. There are really three approaches to the problem:

"Run to fail", i.e., wait until the pump or motor fails and - usually - race out and fix it or replace it
Preventive maintenance, i.e., periodic maintenance of a pump or motor to avoid waiting for it to fail
Predictive maintenance - the utility determines the state of each asset and can plan for servicing or replacement of a pump or motor

The majority of wastewater organizations in the USA have adopted a "run to fail" approach, although usually due to lack of resources and not with the perspective that this is the best way to reduce "whole of life" cost.

A significant proportion have adopted preventive maintenance, although when questioned, they are usually very open about the problem they have in understanding whether they are doing too much maintenance - or too little. Frequently, when we ask the question about their maintenance schedule we get the question back:

"So what does everyone else do?"

The UK, by comparison, has been trying to adopt a much more proactive approach, generally known there as Condition Based Monitoring, which in practice is the same as Predictive Maintenance.

The problem is really one of data, but, like any challenge, there has to be a motivation for doing something different.

Where is the data?

The most typical wastewater collection and water supply systems have very limited data for remote sites.

At a tradeshow a few months ago I was talking to the capital works manager of a wastewater utility with about 30 lift stations. I asked him how he planned his capital works program - how did he decide where to put his resources? His answer:

"It's all based on hours run"

His non-verbal response indicated that he wasn't comfortable with the approach. And when I followed up with a few other questions, he did say that he really felt the organization was flying blind.

However, the problem for this utility, as for so many others - the data just isn't there. The field devices aren't collecting enough data and the SCADA system isn't producing any reports that asset managers, utility directors and operations managers can use for proactive maintenance.

What Predictive Maintenance data can I get?

What is available for pumps, motors and control systems?

Insulation Resistance of motor windings - leading indicator of 50-80% of motor burn outs in submersible pumps
Flow - pump flow rates indicate whether impellors need servicing, and total station volume and inflow per station give system wide metrics for capital works
Pump efficiency - volume per cost of energy, indicates ROI on replacement or servicing of pumps and impellors
Detailed pump fault data - the respective totals of specific fault conditions provides leading indicators of problems
Vibration analysis - only usually cost-effective on the larger pumps

All of this data is now easily available in Pump Station Managers - although to get vibration data, of course, you need the sensors. The other data is available from pump station managers without any additional equipment or sensors - view more information on the MultiSmart pump station manager.

The Organization still needs to be reactive!

It's important to understand that adopting predictive maintenance strategies doesn't mean that every failure will be known in advance. Failure of components in a system - regardless of the actual system - is governed by random factors. We see these random factors as statistics! One in one hundred failed! One in one thousand failed!

Statistics and random failure might be the subject for another day, but the important point is you still have to retain a responsive organization for when a pump fails at 2am on Sunday morning.

The Benefit

The benefit you have with condition based monitoring or predictive maintenance is that you can now have a lot more confidence of the state of your assets and you run your maintenance program more proactively and most cost-effectively.

You can say - confidently - that you are not running your pumps and motors into the ground. Or you can say - confidently - that the organization has almost run its assets into the ground! Let's hope it's not this one!

And based on the real state of the system, you can plan the most effective capital works, replacement or servicing program.

I often use the analogy of a business. If you don't know whether you will make a profit or loss this year, your stakeholders won't think you are looking after their interests.

If you are looking after critical infrastructure you don't want to find that 2009 is the year when all of your pumps started failing and your energy costs went up 10%!

Steve Carson
MultiTrode

MultiTrode is the specialist in control and monitoring for lift stations, and also runs a Lift Station Technology Blog

Shepherding Water: Unregulated water allocation and management

“Careless shepherd make excellent dinner for wolf.“ Earl Derr Biggers

In regulated water supply systems like the River Murray, when you want to use some of a seasonal allocation made to your entitlement, you order it. In the meantime, the balance of the water allocated to you is stored for you in one or more large dams.

In unregulated water supply systems, however, there are no large dams and access to water is reliant on capturing water as it flows past your place and storing it in your own dam. In addition to river flow, significant amounts of water can sometimes be obtained by capturing overland flows – especially in extremely episodic systems like those found in Australia’s Darling River system.

Apart from a few licences to take water from waterholes or weirs, when the flow rate is low no-one is allowed to take water. As the flow rate increases and defined flow-rate thresholds are passed at a defined point, progressively more and more licence holders are allowed to extract water from the river and/or allowed to harvest overland flows.

To prevent over-harvesting, flow-rate threshold announcements are usually made on a daily basis and, for each threshold, entitlements specify a maximum daily volume that may be diverted or taken while the river flows above that rate. In some systems, maximum storage volume limits are set.

The resultant management regime can be extremely complicated. In Queensland’s Lower Balonne system, for example, most entitlements or licences, as they are often called, contain two or three flow-rate thresholds. Larger licences may contain more than 20 flow-rate thresholds.

As a general rule and given the rate at which new technologies and new markets have emerged, there is no logical reason to assume that the current assignment of these opportunities to take water from an unregulated system is optimal. Thus in most systems, there is a case for allowing people to trade their licence from one location to another.

In unregulated systems and when the flow is episodic, how can trading be facilitated? If one wanted to reduce the take of water from one part of the system or “shepherd” water to the end of the system, what administrative arrangements would need to be in place? What is the best way to deal with the effects of shifts to a drier climatic regime and/or preference for environmental outcomes?

Sharing the available water

When setting up an unregulated entitlement and trading system, careful consideration must be given to the likely impacts of each trade on downstream wetlands, downstream entitlement holders and the interests of landholders whose animals graze on floodplains that have traditionally been wetted by overland flows.

The interests of towns may also need to be taken into account. In some New South Wales systems, for example, river managers are required to take into account both the flow rate at a defined point and the amount of water in the Menindee Lakes, from where Broken Hill’s water supply is drawn.

To fulfil these downstream requirements and obligations, managers need to be able to time announcements in a way that enables water to be shepherded past licence holders otherwise entitled to take this water.

Trading

If, however, a river system is divided into a number of reaches and each entitlement is defined by the flow rate at the top of the reach, the maximum amount that one licence holder can take within the reach is not changed by the actions of all other entitlement holders in the reach. Under such as regime, and with appropriate adjustment to account for downstream interests, within-reach trading is possible. But to trade from one reach to another, it has to be possible to raise or lower the flow rate at which the announcements are made.

Accounting for transmission losses

In most unregulated systems, especially those that spread out over large areas, transmission losses can be high. This means that whenever an entitlement is traded, the main factors that determine how much water can be taken – like the maximum pumping rate – may need to be adjusted. In most systems, computer models have been developed and used to estimate the changes that are likely to occur and make an appropriate adjustment to the maximum pumping rate. In practice, however, such models are far from perfect. In the short-term, the easiest way around this problem is to set a conservative exchange rate.

An alternative approach is to allow tagged trading. Under a tagged trading regime, the purchased entitlement retains all of its characteristics at its original location. The amount that can be taken at the new location is then adjusted periodically to take account of changes in conditions at the original location and knowledge about the behaviour of the system. Tagged trading systems are designed to protect the long-term interests of third parties. They do this by assigning the exchange rate risk to the buyer.

We think that the development of a tagged trading system for unregulated system management has merit – especially when the volumes involved are so large that they may change the pattern of water flow across the landscape. Tagged trading in unregulated systems has particular merit when river managers are uncertain about the impact of a trade on the direction of water flow across a landscape. With further development and improvement of modelling, eventually normal transfer of a purchased entitlement to another location should be possible.

When one moves the pumping or diversion point upstream, the interests of other pumpers, landholders who benefit from grazing floodplains and the environment need to be taken into account. If you want to give 100 per cent protection to the floodplain and grazing interests, then only allow trading downstream! But remember that, the further water is traded downstream, the greater are the losses.

Shepherding water downstream

Imagine what would need to happen if a Queensland entitlement was purchased with the view to increasing river flow in South Australia. To effectively shepherd any water to South Australia, every announcement threshold and every monitoring point along the way would need to be changed, but changed only for each shepherding circumstance. Possible, but development of such a system would require a considerable degree of co-ordination and communication among river managers and jurisdictions. Some refinement of interstate water sharing agreements may be necessary.

Without a shepherding arrangement that allows announcement threshold variation, a decision to increase river flow in downstream states by purchasing a Queensland entitlement to may be a questionable investment. CSIRO estimates that when there is a maximum flow at the St. George weir in Queensland’s Condamine Balonne System, one megalitre of water will deliver only 0.18 megalitres to the Murray Mouth.

Dealing with adverse climate shifts

The last question to consider is the effect of adverse climate shift on the health of an unregulated river system. If there is an adverse shift to a drier climatic regime, then one would expect a reduction in the total flow and in the number of high flow events. In most unregulated systems, however, entitlement holders get access to a larger proportion of the volume of low flow events and to a smaller proportion of high flow events, with most of the environmental water coming from high flow events.

If it gets drier, however, under current entitlement conditions the amount that may be taken during low flow events will remain the same. This means that the environment may lose out. If one was concerned about this happening, then a possible solution would be to define flow-rate thresholds as a function of a long-run moving average (adjusted for any lag effect) so that the impact of the emergence of a shift to a drier regime on the health of an unregulated system is minimised. Note also that if there is a shift to drier climatic regime, all downstream users will get fewer opportunities to harvest water.

Where to from here?

As we write this Droplet, the Murray Darling Basin Authority is starting work on a new Plan for the Basin that will need to address these issues. Amongst other things, this will require the development of ways to raise and lower announcement thresholds on an event by event basis. If this were done, then river managers would be able to shepherd water through several reaches. They should also be able to manage the effects of adverse climatic shifts on downstream users and the environment.

If the intent is to find ways to shepherd water over long distances, and if required, to move it through different jurisdictions, then considerable refinement of existing interstate water sharing agreements may be necessary.

Mike Young, The University of Adelaide, Email: Mike.Young@adelaide.edu.au
Jim McColl, CSIRO Land and Water, Email: Jim.McColl@csiro.au

See the Blue Drops of Hope on this Clean Water Map of Haiti

Every blue drop on this Google map represents a Haiti community where a simple, low-cost, low-tech chlorine tablet feeding system has brought clean water to some of the world’s poorest and most dangerous communities.

Thanks to International Action a small non-profit organization in Washington, DC, these simple systems have been installed with the help of local teams that have also been trained to use and maintain the chlorinators.

Since May 2006, International Action has been working with a Haitian group, Dlo Pwòp (Creole for "Clean Water"), to install 100 water chlorinators in 23 of the poorest neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince. An estimated 400,000 residents now have access to clean water for the first time.

The chlorinators are designed and manufactured by Norwalk Wastewater Equipment Company (Norweco), a manufacturer of water and wastewater treatment products, systems and chemicals located in Norwalk, Ohio. The company worked 15 years to adapt its equipment for use in small drinking water systems after learning of the extreme need of people in poor countries. Norweco's chlorinator is now used in about 20 countries.

The Norweco tablet chlorinators require no electricity and operate on the gravity flow of water from city or village water sources. International Action reports the chlorinators are simple to install, easy to operate and trouble-free to maintain. They have found them to be especially effective in developing countries such as Haiti where there is no community plumbing, and so people use buckets to retrieve water from one main source each day.

The system uses specially designed dry chlorine tablets from Arch Chemicals Inc. of Norwalk, Connecticut.. The chlorine tablets are made of calcium hypochlorite, which is in common use for disinfecting drinking water around the world.

For its Haiti project, the chlorine costs International Action less than $50 a month to protect the water for 50,000 residents. The tablet chlorinators provide a steady, pre-set level of chlorination which persists in the water for many days. This provides dependable protection against the disease-causing bacteria common in the buckets, home storage tanks, and local piping in developing countries.

According to International Action, water borne illnesses from unclean drinking water kill more than 2.2 million people in the world every year. They also cite high social costs, such as work lost, missed school and school dropouts. In selecting Haiti for their demonstration project, the organization chose one of the neediest places:

Contaminated water is the leading cause in Haiti of infant mortality and illness in children. Germs causing hepatitis, cholera, and chronic diarrhea are carried in water used for cooking and drinking.
Nearly every water source in Haiti has become contaminated with human waste because of the absence of a sewage sanitation system.
Haiti now has the highest infant mortality rate in the western hemisphere. The Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) reported that more than half of all deaths in Haiti were due to water-borne gastro-intestinal diseases.
Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, with an unemployment rate above 70%. Approximately 75% of all Haitians live in unimaginable poverty.

But it’s not just the severity of Haiti’s poverty or its nearly total lack of water and sewage infrastructure that makes Haiti such a remarkable test case for the organization. Haiti is a dangerous place, even for those who are trying to help the people. In a brief description of its water chlorinator in Bertin, Haiti, an aid worker wrote:

“The communities where we are installing the chlorinators are places that most NGOs don’t dare to venture into because of the insecurity. So when they see us coming to their communities, even though there are big security problems, they know how we are committed at doing our job and this in itself provides a huge amount of credibility to Internaitonal Action.”

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator