"Facilities need to know right away that the water is safe." Jim Hagstrom of Carollo Engineers sees a growing need for real-time analysis and feedback in the U.S. water and wastewater treatment industry.
Key drivers for water/wastewater industry investment include scarcity, such as that brought on by the ongoing drought in the southwestern United States. Even as people continue to migrate southwest, water levels in the Colorado River Basin are dropping by as much as 12 feet per year. Population migration to Florida also is straining the capacity of water/wastewater systems in that part of the country, Hagstrom said.
Other industry growth drivers include more stringent regulations; water conservation and reuse programs; aging infrastructure that needs to be replaced; and alternative financing, such as the use of public-private partnerships to help finance water-treatment projects. Constraints to industry growth include lack of capital; rising costs to build plants; and the reluctance of conservative water facilities to take risks (for example, to modernize control systems) unless there is a guarantee of a large reward.
Of equal importance are incidents that need a quick response. Utilities will reallocate funds to address immediate issues, said Hagstrom. For example, wastewater containing nitrates was once discharged into rivers, but the EPA has banned this practice, requiring investment in treatment facilities.
Automation technology holds the potential to alleviate many of these problems, according to Hagstrom. "From a control system viewpoint, the use of a SCADA system can give facilities tremendous capabilities. The data can help them do a better job of being more efficient in distributing water. And intelligent technologies can help inform plants about how much water is being lost due to leakage. We might use the data to predict where breakages will happen."
Another scarcity solution is the indirect and direct reuse of treated wastewater. "Orange County in California has been taking wastewater, converting it to drinking water quality and then putting it back in the ground since the 1970s," says Hagstrom. "San Diego doesn't have a big groundwater pool, so it is looking at direct potable reuse, which involves placing potable water in storage basins to feed water treatment plants. We are seeing this happen all across the Southwest."
What is needed is a mechanism for real-time feedback to give confidence to the community that we are producing a safe water supply, explained Hagstrom. "Texas wants to do in two years what it took Orange County 20 or 30 years to accomplish in the area of indirect potable reuse," said Hagstrom. "To move quickly, Texas utilities must gather real-time water quality performance. In the past, it was okay to take a water sample to the lab, come back the next day and say, 'We met the limits.' But this practice is no longer acceptable. Facilities need to know right away that the water is safe."