Are Low Water Rates Good or Bad for Consumers?

It’s no secret that the aging US water infrastructure requires significant modernization. Many of the approximately 1 million miles of pipe systems delivering water to homes and businesses in the US were built post-World War II with an average lifespan of 75 to 100 years, according to the 2017 Infrastructure Report Card. That aging infrastructure is wasting 2 trillion gallons of treated drinking water resulting from about 240,000 water main breaks each year, the report indicates.

In 2014, Congress authorized a federal credit program administered by the EPA to fund vital water and wastewater infrastructure improvements, known as the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act. In response to a notice of fund availability, the program received 43 letters of interest from water districts, utilities and entire cities and counties highlighting needed improvements to water infrastructure totaling about $12 billion. As WIFIA offers up to 49 percent of project costs, an additional $6 billion is needed from local agencies, private enterprise and private-public partnerships.

While that may seem like a hefty sum, it pales in comparison to the $1 trillion the American Water Works Association estimates it will take to maintain and improve water infrastructure in the US in the next 25 years.

Read more at Environmental Leader by clicking here

Anti-Drought: Water Officials Hope to Drive Up Water Usage

Today we learned via the Voice of San Diego website...

By Ry Rivard | August 31, 2017

In a jarring contrast to conditions during the drought, the San Diego County Water Authority is actually trying to drive up demand for its water.

As recently as the first months of this year, Californians were asked to conserve water. Well, they did. And they still are. Now, that’s a problem.

Demand for water is low. In San Diego, it’s so low that drinking water is just sitting in the main pipeline that delivers water from hundreds of miles away to the southern half of the county. Typically demand for water is highest during the summer.

When water sits around, particularly in the summer heat, it stagnates and can become undrinkable.

To keep water moving, the Water Authority’s staff is talking about ginning up demand for water by offering incentives to several water agencies, including the city of San Diego’s water department. This wouldn’t necessarily result in profligate water use, because the Water Authority may just want agencies, like the city water department, to switch from the cheaper water they have stored in their own reservoirs to more expensive water that the Water Authority sells them.

To read more, please visit the original article here: http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/government/call-anti-drought-water-officials-hope-drive-water-usage/

Restrooms of the Future

Restrooms of the Future

by Klaus Reichardt — When the economy was booming and bustling, architects, designers, and manufacturers were encouraged to come up with an array of new design and technology ideas for buildings. And the funds were available to make them happen.

No discussion of trends in restrooms is complete without a mention of water conservation. In some facilities, more water is used, and often wasted, in restrooms than in any other area of the building. In 1992, the U.S. Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which included a provision that toilets sold in the United States use no more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush (GPF). At that time, many toilets, even new ones, were using as much as 3 GPF or more. The act also required urinals to use about a gallon of water or less.

Early systems did not work well, often requiring multiple flushes to perform adequately. This defeated the goal of the act. Further, they often required more cleaning because waste was not adequately removed.

Most of these problems have been alleviated, and now many manufacturers are introducing toilets that use 1.3 GPF or less. Some urinals also use less water.

This article was published in FMLink.  Read More Here

The Waterless Urinal and the Fly: a Water Saving Love Story

The Waterless Urinal and the Fly: A Water Saving Love Story

What’s happening in our men’s rooms? Waterless urinals? Flies on the porcelain? Here’s one fact that struck me. Each commercial-use waterless urinal can save between 15,000 and 45,000 gallons of water a year. Ah…no wonder waterless urinals are showing up in airports, malls and office buildings? But what about the fly on the porcelain? With an interest in learning more about this fast growing sector, the business of saving water and that fly…. I reached out to Klaus Reichardt. Klaus should know. He invented the waterless urinal and with the company he founded, San Diego based Waterless Co Inc., Klaus and his team sell more waterless urinals than anyone in the world.

This article is published in ZDNet.  Read More Here