Water helped create the spectacular red rock formations at Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. But the story goes back hundreds of millions of years. The towering sandstone formations began as layers of sediment deposited in ancient environments, including rivers, streams, and sand dunes. Over millions of years, those…
Digging up a sewer can mean paying to rebuild the street above it. In New Orleans’ French Quarter, Manhattan, or downtown Chicago, replacing wastewater infrastructure means finding room for excavation while managing lane closures, traffic, and access to homes and businesses. Joseph Talley of Imerys explains why repairing structures in…
Hydrogen sulfide gets the blame for eating away at concrete sewers. But there’s another step in the chemistry. Joseph Talley of Imerys delivers a crash course: bacteria breaking down waste under low-oxygen conditions generate hydrogen sulfide, which can escape from wastewater into the air above it. On moist sewer surfaces…
The best water infrastructure solutions often start with listening to the people facing the problems. For water technology and equipment companies, understanding the challenges utilities, engineers, and contractors encounter can be just as valuable as developing new products. That's what Will Brannon of U.S. Pipe says he discovered through the…
What’s actually eating away at the concrete inside our sewer systems? The answer takes us into a world of bacteria, sulfuric acid, and chemical reactions happening beneath our streets. In this episode, Joseph Talley of Imerys provides a deep dive into the chemistry of wastewater corrosion. He breaks down how…
SewerAI’s testing ground for new AI tools starts inside its own office. Employees use AI for number crunching, planning, and writing, then share what they’ve built during Friday sessions every two weeks. Those experiments help identify approaches that could be useful to customers, explains Seth Nickinson , Principal Product Manager…
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…