Every gallon leaving a wastewater treatment plant has to pass a chemistry test. I spent time with Lindie Aragon, a chemist for the City of Westminster, inside the Colorado utility’s wastewater laboratory. Lindie and her colleagues collect, preserve, and analyze samples to ensure the treated water discharged from the plant…
💧 H2O INTRO 👤 Meet Robyn Fischer, Senior Director, North America, for the International Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Foundation (IWSH). Closing the water access gap takes skilled plumbers, quality products, and connections to the communities that need them. Fischer explains how IWSH brings plumbing industry resources and community education together…
The next leap for utility data may be less about collecting more of it—and more about being able to ask better questions. Seth Nickinson of SewerAI says utilities are increasingly consolidating information in the cloud and connecting it with GIS and other data sources. The challenge is making sense of…
Federal funding for lead pipe replacement can take months to close—long enough for a northern community to lose an entire construction season. Shawn Kerachsky, president and CEO of Community Infrastructure Partners, says interim financing can keep that delay from stopping the work. In Wausau, Wisconsin, the company provided upfront funding…
Even in the middle of New York City, there’s something special about finding space to slow down and enjoy the water. I spent some time walking along the East River beneath the Queensboro Bridge (better known as the 59th Street Bridge), taking in the views of Roosevelt Island, the passing…
In Greeley, a water leak that once could go unnoticed for weeks can now show up in the data within minutes. John Goyen, a civil engineer with Greeley Water and Sewer who managed the city’s meter replacement project, explains the difference between the old system and Advanced Metering Infrastructure, or…
After years of collecting and organizing data, the water sector appears to be reaching a turning point: AI is helping utilities put that information to work proactively. In this episode, Seth Nickinson, Director of Product at SewerAI, brings the perspective of a software developer responding to what utilities need from…
Fecal contamination can reach swimmers and drinking water supplies before laboratory results reveal the problem. Virridy is using optical sensors to help close that reporting gap. Evan Thomas, CEO of Virridy, explains how its Lume sensor uses tryptophan-like fluorescence—a light signal associated with organic material—and machine learning to estimate E.…
At a golf course in Colorado’s high desert, drought is changing where every gallon goes. John Atencio, head golf professional at Cattails Golf Course in Alamosa, says the old back-nine irrigation system was more than 40 years old, leaking badly, and forcing maintenance crews to spend much of their time…
A shared contract does not create a collaborative water project. A shared definition of success can. Collaborative delivery brings utility owners, operators, engineers, builders, technology providers, and other stakeholders into the process early enough to agree on the project’s mission, priorities, and desired results. Jeff McCord, senior director of business…
💧 H2O INTRO 👤 Meet Joshua Perkins, Chief of Staff of Young, Gifted & Green. A knock at the door can alert a family to lead risks in their drinking water. Perkins explains how community canvassing helps residents learn that their homes may be connected to lead service lines, understand…
A $1.2 million federal grant helped unlock a much larger restoration and irrigation project on Colorado’s Rio Grande. Cassandra McEwen of the Rio Grande Headwaters Restoration Project explains how the Farmers Union diversion came together by stacking several sources of money: Bureau of Reclamation WaterSMART funding, a Colorado Water Plan…
Replacing lead pipes in an older community can cost more than $100 million—and local leadership determines whether that challenge becomes a plan. Mayor Nathaniel George Booker has made lead service line replacement a public-health priority in Maywood, Illinois, building partnerships with Cook County, the National League of Cities, the National…
Saving water is one challenge; finding the money to build conservation projects is another. The fourth episode of Resilience In The Rockies examines how Colorado communities are assembling federal, state, local, and private funding to turn water-efficiency ideas into infrastructure, with WaterNow helping local partners identify opportunities, navigate complex grant…
The Mississippi River runs through New Orleans—and through its taps. I’m on the Algiers side, looking across the river toward downtown New Orleans, at an intake where the city’s drinking water journey begins. Pumps pull river water into the Algiers treatment plant, which turns about 11 million gallons a day…
Westminster is turning one of its most visible public landscapes into a demonstration of how cities can conserve water without sacrificing useful green space. Victoria Arling of WaterNow explains how the city, working with WaterNow and Western Resource Advocates, identified roughly four acres of high-water-use Kentucky bluegrass around City Hall…
Longmont is using data to answer a deceptively simple conservation question: which lawns should come out first? Victoria Arling of WaterNow explains how the city worked through the Project Accelerator to identify nonfunctional turf on city-owned properties and build a more systematic way to prioritize future conversions. The effort brought…
Federal water money can be transformative for rural communities, but getting through the application process can be a barrier of its own. Cynthia Koehler of WaterNow explains how the organization’s Grant Help Desk helps smaller communities navigate state and federal funding programs that can otherwise require significant staff time and…
Alamosa is showing that even a public golf course can become a serious water-conservation project when the infrastructure is designed for efficiency. Cynthia Koehler of WaterNow points to Cattails Golf Course, where the city replaced an aging irrigation system with more precise technology while preserving a heavily used community recreation…
Aspen is pairing tougher landscape rules with the workforce needed to make them work. Cynthia Koehler of WaterNow says the city’s water-efficient landscaping approach stands out because property owners are not simply handed a standard and left to figure out compliance on their own. Since 2018, WaterNow has helped Aspen…
Eagle County is finding that turf replacement works better when residents get more than a rebate. Cynthia Koehler of WaterNow points to the Beyond Lawn program as a model because it pairs financial incentives with on-site audits and property-specific guidance. Those evaluations help homeowners see where nonfunctional turf can be…
Greeley is turning a massive meter replacement project into a water-conservation strategy. Victoria Arling of WaterNow explains how the city used about $3.5 million in federal WaterSMART grants to help modernize nearly 27,000 water meters with advanced metering infrastructure, or AMI. The new system gives customers near-real-time information about their…
Denver Water’s lead service line replacement program is also testing a financing model with implications far beyond lead pipes. Cynthia Koehler of WaterNow explains how Denver Water is using long-term financing to accelerate replacement of customer-owned lead service lines rather than relying only on annual operating budgets. The approach is…
A mostly unused lawn at the University of Northern Colorado is being turned into a more useful public space while saving nearly 2 million gallons of water a year. Victoria Arling of WaterNow explains how Greeley, UNC, and project partners reworked the campus North Lawn from high-water-use bluegrass into a…