An industrial-age coal canal is flowing again—and functioning as 21st-century water infrastructure. At Flat Rock Dam, the Philadelphia Water Department has reconnected the Schuylkill River to the two-mile Manayunk Canal, restoring a steady flow of fresh water for the first time in roughly 80 years. After navigation ended in the…
Grand Rapids has reduced its inventory of lead service lines from about 27,000 to nearly 16,000—and community outreach helped unlock thousands of those replacements. Izamar Contreras, an assistant project manager with the City of Grand Rapids, says the Michigan city began developing its proactive replacement program nearly a decade ago…
A water-saving landscape code can fail at the sprinkler head. Aspen requires qualifying new and renovated landscapes to meet a water budget, but the city also checks whether the irrigation system installed in the field can perform as designed. That matters in a headwaters community where 60% to 70% of…
Indoor residential water use in American homes has fallen 44 percent over three decades, as more efficient fixtures and appliances allow people to perform the same daily tasks with far less water. Peter Mayer, principal engineer at WaterDM and lead author of all three Residential End Uses of Water studies,…
A water treatment plant cannot stop serving a community while its next major upgrade is designed and built. Barbara Martin, executive director of the Water Collaborative Delivery Association, says bringing utilities, contractors, and other stakeholders together earlier can produce three practical benefits: 1️⃣ Faster schedules: Teams can anticipate delays, resolve…
A canal built for Chicago industry is becoming a testing ground for floating habitat. The Wild Mile is a floating eco-park along the North Branch Canal of the Chicago River, where native plants, aquatic habitat and public access are being built directly into a waterway engineered for industry nearly 170…
A half-billion-dollar lead-pipe program pushed Denver Water into unfamiliar territory: financing infrastructure buried on private property. Angela Bricmont, chief financial officer for Denver Water, explains that utilities traditionally borrow against assets they own. Customer-owned lead service lines did not fit that model—even though replacing them would deliver a major public-health…
The ocean wins as the people’s choice. 🌊 For this episode of Water Street Questions, we hit the sidewalk outside the Reservoir Center in Washington, D.C., with a simple assignment: name your favorite type of water body — and tell us why. The result wasn’t particularly close. The ocean dominated,…
New landscapes in one fast-growing Colorado community now come with a water ceiling. The City and County of Broomfield limits turf to 30% of the landscaped area in qualifying development projects. Kate Volz, Broomfield’s landscape architect, says only 20% of that turf can be cool-season grass. The ordinance sharply restricts…
What gets flushed down a toilet can become a treatment bottleneck when heavy rainfall drives a sudden surge of wastewater toward a plant. When the volume entering a sewer system exceeds its treatment capacity, untreated wastewater can be diverted through bypasses and discharged into rivers. Frans Durieux, founding partner of…
A lead-pipe replacement timeline measured in decades collapsed to less than three years in Newark. Kareem Adeem, director of Newark’s Department of Water and Sewer Utilities, says the city responded to its 2019 drinking water crisis by replacing more than 23,000 lead service lines at no cost to residents. The…
Policy is becoming a water-supply tool in Colorado, as local governments use development codes, financing rules, and workforce requirements to reduce demand. The second episode of Resilience in the Rockies examines how Broomfield, Denver Water, and Aspen are using governance to move conservation projects forward. In Broomfield, where landscape irrigation…
A leaky golf course became a water-supply project. Cattails Golf Course in Alamosa, Colorado, replaced more than 10,000 feet of failing pipe as part of a $1.3 million irrigation overhaul. Weather sensors, adjustable nozzles, smart controls, and individually managed sprinkler heads now allow staff to apply water with far greater…
Installing more rain barrels and drainage assets does not guarantee less flooding or fewer sewer spills. Dr. Sarah Bunney, co-founder and CEO of Our Rainwater, says the harder task is putting the right intervention in the right location—and ensuring it continues working years after installation. The challenge applies across very…
Boston-area communities have access to $200 million for removing lead service lines—but the strongest financial support depends on replacing the entire pipe. Steve Estes-Smargiassi, director of planning and sustainability at the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, says the regional wholesaler does not own the lead pipes connecting customers to local water…
Failure is the way forward. At Blue-White Industries, CEO Rob Gledhill says teams developing new water-treatment products fail multiple times a day—and log every failure. Inside Studio 53, each test rules out an unsuccessful design, records what was learned and informs the next iteration. That record helps engineers measure progress…
Innovation works best when everyone has a role—from engineers and production workers to customer-service staff, software developers, returns specialists and customers. At Blue-White Industries, CEO Rob Gledhill says water technology is never designed in a vacuum. Quality assurance, tech support, sales, marketing and other teams contribute what they learn from…
The world must mobilize up to $7 trillion for water infrastructure by 2030 while more than 80% of global wastewater still enters water bodies untreated, according to the World Bank and UNESCO. Shirley Zhong, co-founder and COO of Toronto-based Xatoms, grew up near industrial complexes in Guangdong, China, and watched…
Colorado entered this summer after its worst snowpack on record—making outdoor water conservation an immediate supply strategy, not a distant concern. In Summit County, High Country Conservation Center has brought together local governments, water providers, landscape contractors, nonprofits, and residents to reduce demand across a region where no single jurisdiction…
Bringing research, prototyping, production, and shipping under one roof can turn American manufacturing into a faster engine for water innovation. Rob Gledhill, CEO of Blue-White Industries, offers an inside look at how the Huntington Beach company develops and manufactures equipment used in water and wastewater treatment. Blue-White produces chemical metering…
💧 H2O INTRO 🤝 Meet Corwin Washington, Utility Senior Service Manager for the Stormwater Division at the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina, it took four days for floodwaters across New Orleans to reach the level of Lake Pontchartrain. Two decades later, the utility that helped…
Milwaukee’s modern water technology hub began with beer. Karen Frost, executive director of The Water Council, traces the region’s distinctive concentration of water businesses back roughly 150 years, when breweries and other water-intensive industries drove demand for pumps, valves, meters, and pipes. That demand helped create a dense local supply…
Beer production leaves behind millions of tons of waterlogged spent grain—and Bakal is working to recover more value from every load. David Maciel, CEO and co-founder of Bakal, says the company’s patented process transforms wet brewing biomass into nutrient-rich ingredients for livestock. The system can recover up to 50% of…
In Aspen, where roughly 60% of treated water is used outdoors, landscaping rules go well beyond restricting turf. The city’s Water Efficient Landscaping Standards require qualifying new construction and renovation projects to design landscapes around a maximum outdoor water budget. Developers and property owners must account for irrigation design, plant…