Turning Mississippi River water into drinking water takes skill, responsibility, and dedication. I spent a shift with Ed Azemas, a drinking water operator at the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans Algiers plant, seeing firsthand what he and his colleagues put into treating the water and getting it out…
Water utilities are gaining more flexibility to choose project delivery methods suited to increasingly complex infrastructure work. Guy Voss, vice president and collaborative project delivery director at HDR and president of the Water Collaborative Delivery Association, says these approaches are expanding as utilities confront more infrastructure needs than available funding…
A filter can look pretty simple from the outside. What is inside it matters a lot. At the Johnson Screens booth at WEFTEC, I got a quick look at several types of filtration media used in water and wastewater treatment — including sand, activated carbon, and recycled glass. Each media…
A rebate alone was not enough to persuade Eagle County homeowners to remove turf. Beyond Lawn pairs financial incentives with approximately two-hour property evaluations that examine both the landscape and every irrigation zone. Participants then receive a customized conservation report with a property map, water budget, irrigation schedule, plant recommendations,…
At nine years old, Harris Siddiqui stood in a California apartment and watched water flow from a faucet for the first time. After 18 years working in public water systems, Siddiqui saw a persistent problem from the other side of the tap: utility staff were responsible for thousands of buried…
A water leak that once could run for a month can now trigger an alert within a day. Greeley, Colorado, has replaced roughly 27,000 aging water meters with advanced Badger Meter technology, changing how the city measures demand and helps customers find waste. The old meters were about 15 years…
A ball rolling through a sewer can tell utilities a lot about what’s happening underground. At WEFTEC, I got a look at SUEZ SewerBall, a free-floating device that travels through sewer pipes using the flow of wastewater. Equipped with sensors and cameras, it collects condition data as it moves through…
Replacing a lead pipe often begins with a resident trusting the people asking for permission to work at their home. Sandy Kutzing, lead and copper strategy leader at CDM Smith, says the company has helped remove more than 70,000 complete lead service lines and inventoried over five million service lines…
A supplier brought into a water infrastructure project early can help determine whether its budget, schedule, and materials remain viable years later. Kelly Farace, senior manager of national accounts at Core & Main and communications committee chair for the Water Collaborative Delivery Association, says suppliers can contribute market insight, greater…
Installing lead-removal filters in schools solves one problem—and creates another: making sure hundreds of cartridges don’t expire unnoticed. Point-of-use filters can reduce exposure to lead and other contaminants, but only if they are maintained and replaced on time. EPA warns that using a filter beyond its service life can make…
Boulder’s next water-conservation tool is not another rebate or irrigation device. It is a new strategy for reaching the people existing programs have missed. The city already offers programs to improve water efficiency, eliminate leaks, and reduce utility costs. But participation depends on whether residents receive the information, see its…
This is waterloop. We go where the water is—to the people, places, and projects driving change. As an award-winning nonprofit news outlet, waterloop produces documentaries, podcasts, and short videos that explore solutions for water sustainability. The reporting takes audiences inside infrastructure, along waterways, and into communities to show how water…
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…