Water Management

I?m going to swim against the recent tide of commentaries in this publication and dozens of others on water and sewer funding. All call for more grants. Au contraire!? Going back about 45 years I see that water and sewer grants are a lot likeRead More

J. Tyler Hewitt has joined HDR as the Water and Natural Resources business group?s manager for the state of Georgia. He will be headquartered in HDR?s Atlanta, Ga., office. A professional engineer, Hewitt has more than 15 years of Georgia municipal experience in water supply,Read More

The City of Lee?s Summit, Mo., is located on the southeast side of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area and provides water service to approximately 93,000 customers. The water department delivers approximately four billion gallons of water per year to its customers through a 580-mile systemRead More

Strong growth in the use of asset management practices within the water industry is expected over the next five years, according the findings of a study released March 11.?The study, ?Water Infrastructure Asset Management: Adopting Best Practices to Enable Better Investments,? was conducted by McGraw-HillRead More

The International Private Water Association (IPWA) will?hold a Financial Task Force meeting via?conference call on April 18 from 9:30 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. (EST). The focus of the meeting and presentation will be a review of a new initiative being implemented by the Inter-American DevelopmentRead More

Globally, non-revenue water amounts to an average of 34 percent of processed water. In other words, 34 percent of the water that a utility has treated and pumped is not billed. The World Bank estimates that non-revenue water costs utilities $14 billion, annually, worldwide. In the United States, reports have shown that the non-revenue water totals between 10 and 30 percent, with more than 240,000 main breaks each year.

Two years ago, Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility (AWWU) began to upgrade water service capacity for a residential area with five homes built approximately 50 years ago. Over the years, three of the homes were converted to multi-family rentals and therefore, demand on the small water main serving them increased greatly. This led to frequent water pressure problems.

Most people imagine SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) as a single computer interface overseeing a utilitys entire remote infrastructure. The reality more often resembles the system found in Ocala, Fla., which was developed over several years by a variety of system integrators.

In 1597, when Sir Francis Bacon penned the concept “Knowledge is Power” he proposed an entirely new system based on empirical and inductive principles and the active development of new arts and inventions. This knight and intellectual reformer developed a system whose ultimate goal would be the production of practical knowledge for “the use and benefit of men.” He defined the “scientific method” which is at the foundation for infrastructure asset management.

Money – or the lack of it – dominates discussions in Washington these days, and the water sector is no exception. Thanks to the stern taskmaster of deficit reduction, it is a given that cuts in government spending will be made; the only remaining question is which programs will be cut and by how much. On March 13, a House Appropriations Subcommittee held an oversight hearing to look at implications of these funding limitations on water infrastructure.