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In This Issue

From the Editor

Includes Operations
in TX & CO

WEST COVINA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 17, 2002--Southwest Water Company today announced the acquisition of the majority of AquaSource, Inc.'s water and wastewater contract operations business for an expected purchase price, after adjustments, to exceed $10 million in cash.  The acquisition includes AquaSource's contract operations in Colorado and the Houston, Texas, area.

At closing, combined revenues from these two business units are expected to be in excess of $16 million. Closing of the transaction is expected in the fourth quarter. AquaSource, Inc. is a subsidiary of DQE.

Anton C. Garnier, Southwest Water president and chief executive officer, said, "This acquisition marks an important step in our path of long-term strategic growth. Purchasing the AquaSource business units significantly expands our Services Group footprint, introducing us to a new market in Colorado and strengthening our presence in the greater Houston area. We look forward to welcoming more than 230 new employees to the Southwest Water team."

Garnier continued, "The AquaSource operations present an excellent strategic fit with Southwest Water. We anticipate that our more than 25 years of experience serving state, county, municipal and industrial customers will result in a seamless transition. We believe this acquisition offers added value for our stockholders, since we expect the transaction to be immediately accretive. And, our new customers will benefit as well, as we look forward to providing them with the same level of award-winning service on which we have built our reputation."

Southwest Water Company provides a broad range of services, including water production, treatment and distribution, wastewater collection and treatment, public works services and utility submetering. The company owns regulated public utilities and also serves cities, utility districts and private companies under contract. More than 1.5 million people in 30 states from coast to coast depend on Southwest Water for high-quality, reliable service.

For more information contact:
Mr. Peter J. Moerbeek
Southwest Water Company
Telephone:  626-915-1551
Web site:  http://www.southwestwater.com/

Industry Specific Tool

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 12, 2002-- Industry-Specific Tools Provide Intuitive Creation and Maintenance of Water and Wastewater Networks Intergraph Mapping and GIS Solutions today announced the worldwide availability of GeoMedia PublicWorks Manager 5.0, software designed specifically for local government public works departments as they create and maintain the infrastructure network of water and wastewater systems.

GeoMedia PublicWorks Manager 5.0, built as an add-on to Intergraph's GeoMedia Professional 5.0, offers industry-specific tools to manage the input and maintenance of water and wastewater systems. The new software release takes full advantage of platform advances in GeoMedia Professional 5.0 to deliver productivity gains for collecting and modifying data and speeding implementation of GIS databases.

"Intergraph continues to develop the first-class functionality needed to advance enterprisewide geospatial infrastructure management for industry-specific workflows, such as public works asset management," said Rob Gunn, GeoMedia PublicWorks product manager. "This version of GeoMedia PublicWorks Manager delivers new levels of the performance, flexibility, and scalability that local governments require as they build and maintain water and wastewater networks."

Intergraph's GeoMedia PublicWorks Manager broadens the data capture, placement, and editing tools of the state-of-the-art GeoMedia technology with intelligent functionality to increase productivity in the day-to-day activities of public works professionals. The industry-specific module provides the ability to build, maintain, and validate linear-connected networks using advanced feature modeling and rules-based digitizing. For example, users define the digitizing behavior and validation rules applicable to all fittings when creating a feature model. Once the feature model is defined, operators can input, edit, and validate data more quickly and easily.

Additional GeoMedia PublicWorks Manager technologies are designed to promote efficient public works workflows and include: -- Superior network tracing tools allow visualization of water flow to determine areas affected by network problems and facilitate tasks such as finding open valves in the water distribution system, isolating water main breaks, or even locating areas harmed in the sewer system after a toxic spill.

• Unparalleled dimensioning capabilities enable operators to place CAD-like dimensions in GIS workflows.
• Smart feature placement and editing tools provide faster and more accurate data input and revisions.
• Advanced network validation technologies locate features that violate predefined rules either automatically or in a "rules-off" mode for operator convenience.

With GeoMedia technology that supports open architecture and open data structures at its foundation, GeoMedia PublicWorks allows public works departments to access all available business, project, or GIS data from any department or source, such as municipal, regional, or national data. For additional information about Intergraph's line of industry-specific GeoMedia technology and industry products, visit www.intergraph.com/gis.

For more information, visit www.intergraph.com/imgs. Intergraph and GeoMedia are registered trademarks of Intergraph Corporation. Other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

For more information contact:
Intergraph Corporation
Telephone:  800-791-3357 or +1-256-730-7191
Web site: www.intergraph.com/imgs

The Reading Room

Ask Tom! Column

We Need Your Guest Articles!
Do you have an area of expertise in water and wastewater treatment, have you solved a difficult problem? Share your knowledge with others and promote yourself by contributing an article to the Ask Tom! Column.  For more information, please contact Tom Keenan at:  info@nesa.ie

OdaLog Reduces Odor Complaints

Phoenix, AZ - September 16, 2002 - Detection Instruments Corporation, exclusive North American distributor of the OdaLog Hydrogen Sulfide Gas Logger announced today the receipt of the Water Environment Federation's 2002 Innovative Technology Award, Instrumentation category. The Water Environment Federation is the nation's leading technical organization for the water quality industry. The OdaLog demonstrated a significant achievement in design and operation resulting in long-term water quality improvement.

App-Tek International manufactures the OdaLog in Australia. Ross Church, App-Tek Director, states "I'm delighted that the OdaLog received this high honor from the Water Environment Federation. The successful introduction of the OdaLog into the North American Wastewater industry has generated more research and development efforts for App-Tek International, which will ultimately benefit the wastewater industry throughout the world."

Typical applications for the OdaLog include locating and monitoring the source of H2S emissions at pump stations, collection systems, and receiving manholes. Once the source of the odor is determined, the unit can be used to show the effectiveness of the odor reduction strategies implemented. According to Lindy Eppinger, OdaLog Applications Specialist, "Many of our customers have been able to cost justify several units through chemical savings alone, realized by pinpointing the specific times that the H2S emissions occur."

Designed specifically for the wastewater industry, the OdaLog is totally sealed and moisture resistant. Unique features include a durable, chemically resistant body, high memory capacity, magnetic switches, and an infrared communication link for programming and data downloading. The infrared link eliminates outside pin connections and corrosion problems commonly associated with such connections.

Data generated by the OdaLog has allowed many municipalities to reduce the amount of chemicals and biological agents added to combat H2S gas by determining times of high H2S gas occurrences and dosing accordingly. Better "timing" of H2S inhibiting additives has also led to reduced community odor complaints and decreased corrosion of assets within sewer systems.

The OdaLog software allows the user to configure the OdaLog through a simple graphical user interface, as well as download the data after a sampling session. The user can customize the graph to include titles, footers, and labels; gas concentrations, temperature levels and data points, times and dates, gas action levels, as well as zoom in on specific areas of the data graphs. Stored data can easily be exported to various commercially available spreadsheet formats.

Source:  http://www.detectioninstruments.com/

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More of Vivendi Sold Off

PALM DESERT, Calif., Sept. 13, 2002 – United States Filter Corporation (USFilter) today announced it has signed an agreement to sell its waterworks distribution business to a company jointly owned by JPMorgan Partners, the private equity arm of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., and Thomas H. Lee Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm, for a cash purchase price of $620 million.

The sale furthers USFilter's announced strategy to divest non-core assets and focus on its water-wastewater equipment and services businesses and consumer and commercial businesses.

USFilter's waterworks distribution business supplies pipes, hydrants, valves and meters through more than 140 sales and service centers in the United States. Total annual sales in 2001 were approximately $1.1 billion. The transaction, anticipated to be completed during the fourth quarter, is subject to normal regulatory approvals and satisfaction of customary conditions.

"Upon the sale of our waterworks distribution group, USFilter's total year-to-date proceeds from the divestiture of non-core assets will be over $1 billion, in-line with our stated target for 2002," said Andrew D. Seidel, USFilter President and CEO. "Last week we announced that USFilter had signed an agreement to sell our Plymouth Products consumer products subsidiary to Pentair in a transaction which will be completed later this year. We also sold our filtration and separations group during the second quarter of this year. Completion of these transactions, along with our ongoing strategic acquisitions, will enable us to focus on the growth and development of our expanding core water-wastewater equipment and services businesses, as well as our consumer and commercial businesses."

USFilter waterworks distribution group President and COO, Harry Hornish, speaking about the prospects for the group under the ownership of JPMorgan Partners and Thomas H. Lee Partners said, “I am extremely excited to partner with two great financial sponsors focused on putting us back into a growth mode and feel the change in ownership should be transparent to our customers, our employees and our suppliers. Additionally, both of our private equity sponsors currently have distribution businesses in their portfolios, so they have an understanding of our needs and our opportunities.”

Visit the company web site at www.usfilter.com

Help Forum

People post their requests for help and offer their suggestions to others in our open forum.

Mr. Davis wants to know about E Coli & wastewater:

What is the impact of E.coli on water and wastewater treatment practices? Can education and cooperative partnership reduce the E. coli threat? How?

What regulatory actions and responses are being considered?
(Click here to post a reply)

Mike Davis
davis_md_98@yahoo.com

Mr. Fitzwater wants to remove methane gas:

We have two fixed cover anaerobic digesters and two anaerobic storage tanks with floating covers. We are going to have the fixed cover digesters cleaned shortly.

What we aren't sure about is how to deal with the methane. We are going to pump out one digester to the other using a recycle pump. We will have to open a hatch on the lid to allow air into the digester to not create a vacuum in the digester do to the liquid being removed.

How do we get the methane out of this tank without creating an explosive environment?
(Click here to post a reply)

Mark Fitzwater
mfitzwater@ci.helena.mt.us

Share your expertise with others in the Help Forum.

Photos Wanted

This week's photo is of a Headworks, Spiralman, dual-cleaning system providing high-flow capacity and redundancy.  Headworks spiral screens pose less danger of blocking. The diameter of the sieve and transport spiral are always the same size throughout.

Submitted by Denise White of Headworks, Inc.

We would love to have your photo of a water treatment process, new plant or equipment "action shot" for our home page.  If you have a favorite photograph of water treatment at its best, please e-mail us a jpeg or gif of the photo with a description of what is in the photo for our home page.  

Send your photograph and description to, mailto:news@waterandwastewater.com

Jobs

Water Resources Engineer

If you are a Water Resources Engineer looking for a new or different way to utilize your knowledge & at the same time work for a dynamic, world-class company, Haestad Methods is the place for you!  We are currently seeking outgoing, enthusiastic Engineers to be an integral part of the following areas:

* Engineering Strategic and Technical Sales  
* Engineering Technical Support  
* Assistant Webmaster/Content Manager  
* Continuing Education  
* Technical Writing
* Development Editors (for Haestad Press)

This is an incredible opportunity with tremendous potential for growth.  

What we would require (at a minimum) in terms of education and experience:

* Bachelors degree in an Engineering discipline (GPA of 3.0+) or equivalent  
* Knowledge of hydraulics and hydrology
* Internet/computer proficiency
* Enjoy working in a team-based environment
* Knowledge and interest in marketing and sales is a plus

**TO APPLY, send your resume and cover letter to jointheteam-waw@haestad.com**

What about benefits?
Haestad Methods boasts a great working environment for all of our employees.  Take a break in our game room & have a great time at our company parties and picnics.  Put away your suits and enjoy a casual dress code.  Work daily with world renowned Engineers.  All this plus an excellent, comprehensive benefits package including medical insurance and a 401(k) plan.

About Haestad Methods:
Haestad Methods is internationally recognized as the world's leading water resources software company and we are proud to have built lasting relationships at over 40,000 client sites for the past 20 years.

Today our network of users spans over 10,000 cities in 170 countries, and our clients range from the largest utilities and government agencies to the smallest consulting firms.

To learn more about Haestad Methods visit our website at www.haestad.com.

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© 1999-2002 Water and Wastewater.com
Home page:  http://www.waterandwastewater.com

Joseph Taylor, Editor
Water and Wastewater Newsletter
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