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a founding member of JAMS.

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You are here: Home / Archives for water

CH2M and IBM have a fix for our water systems disaster

May 4, 2016 by Environmental ADR Editor Leave a Comment

CH2M-IBM-fix- water-systems-disasterPeople in developed countries turn on the tap and safe drinking water flows, a dramatic health benefit they tend to take for granted. That complacency dramatically was disrupted last year when children in Flint, Michigan, started testing positive for lead poisoning and the source was traced to tap water.

But Flint shouldn’t have taken anyone by surprise; in fact, water industry professionals have been sounding the alert for years.

Much of the water infrastructure in the developed world was built 70 to 100 years ago and is nearing the end of its useful life. The American Water Works Association said we have entered “the replacement era,” in which we must rebuild “the water and wastewater systems bequeathed to us by earlier generations.” Most pipes, depending on their materials and the environment in which they reside, have a lifespan of 60 to 95 years. Treatment plants’ mechanical and electric components can serve 15 to 25 years. Without prompt upgrades, we are likely to see deteriorating water quality, with more incidents of lead or arsenic poisoning and bacterial and viral contamination, and increasing numbers of leaks disrupting water service and leading to costly emergency repairs.

In 2013 the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the U.S. drinking water system a grade of D. Across the United States, 240,000 water mains burst a year, or about one every two minutes. Every year, more than 41 billion cubic yards of treated water are lost to leaks around the world — enough water to serve almost 400 million people, according to the World Bank. And although drinking water in the United States remains quite safe overall, contamination with bacteria or viruses regularly makes people sick. In 2011–2012, the nation saw 32 drinking water–associated disease outbreaks, causing 431 cases of illness and 14 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Upgrading the more than 1 million miles of drinking water pipes in the U.S. — along with other water infrastructure — and expanding systems to meet the needs of a growing population is projected to cost more than $1 trillion over the next 25 years, according to the AWWA. Although the financial investment required is mind-boggling, putting off upgrades can mean degraded water quality from leaky pipes or outdated treatment facilities, service interruptions and even higher costs: It’s much cheaper to prevent a leak than to fix water damage afterward in moldy buildings or buckled roads.

To perform targeted triage, new technologies — sensors, smart meters and data management platforms — are helping water managers to make informed decisions about how to allocate precious funds and stay ahead of problems.

“We preach asset management. Don’t just replace x percent of pipes a year,” said Tommy Holmes, legislative director of AWWA. “Do an analysis of your system and choose which 2 percent of pipes need to be replaced, rather than just focusing on a geographic area. You want to replace pipes on the verge of failure first.” Read More

Read the entire article at GreenBiz

This was originally published on GreenBiz written by Erica Gies

Filed Under: In the News Tagged With: data, infrastructure, technology, water

Water Is Broken. Data Can Fix It.

March 28, 2016 by Environmental ADR Editor Leave a Comment

Water Is Broken Data Can Fix It

Water Is Broken Data Can Fix It

AS a nation, we have become disciples of data. We interview 60,000 families a month to determine the unemployment rate, we monitor how much energy we use every seven days, Amazon ranks sales of every book it sells every hour.

Then there is water.

Water may be the most important item in our lives, our economy and our landscape about which we know the least. We not only don’t tabulate our water use every hour or every day, we don’t do it every month, or even every year.

The official analysis of water use in the United States is done every five years. It takes a tiny team of people four years to collect, tabulate and release the data. In November 2014, the United States Geological Survey issued its most current comprehensive analysis of United States water use — for the year 2010.

The 2010 report runs 64 pages of small type, reporting water use in each state by quality and quantity, by source, and by whether it’s used on farms, in factories or in homes.

It doesn’t take four years to get five years of data. All we get every five years is one year of data.

The data system is ridiculously primitive. It was an embarrassment even two decades ago. The vast gaps — we start out missing 80 percent of the picture — mean that from one side of the continent to the other, we’re making decisions blindly.

n just the past 27 months, there have been a string of high-profile water crises — poisoned water in Flint, Mich.; polluted water in Toledo, Ohio, andCharleston, W. Va.; the continued drying of the Colorado River basin — that have undermined confidence in our ability to manage water.

In the time it took to compile the 2010 report, Texas endured a four-year drought. California settled into what has become a five-year drought. The most authoritative water-use data from across the West couldn’t be less helpful: It’s from the year before the droughts began.

Read the entire article at the New York Times.

This article was originally published in the New York Times written by Charles Fishman.

Filed Under: In the News Tagged With: data analysis, eco-friendly, EPA, Flint, water, water summit

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lester-levy

I strongly believe in the value of mediation – said another way, environmental mediation really works. I would go even further: I believe that environmental disputes are perfectly suited to the mediation process – perhaps more so than any other area of legal practice. I have formed these views after mediating environmental cases for more than 20 years, throughout the United States, and having worked with thousands of lawyers, companies, insurance carriers, regulatory agencies and courts. My … Read more

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