Municipal Water Leader April 2022

Volume 9 Issue 4

April 2022

Southern Nevada Water Authority’s John Entsminger: Betting on the Future

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Municipal Water Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for July/August and November/December by an American company established in 2009.

Jeff Kightlinger Contributing Editor jeff.kightlinger@municipalwaterleader.com

STAFF:

6

Southern Nevada Water Authority’s John Entsminger: Betting on the Future

Contents April 2022 Volume 9, Issue 4

5 N egotiating the Agreements of the Future

By Kris Polly

20 H eads Above Water: Opportunities and Challenges for Western Water

6 Southern

Nevada Water Authority’s John Entsminger: Betting on the Future

24 R ob Craw of AqueoUS Vets: Treating PFAS Nationwide

14 M ax Silva of A&W Maintenance: Protecting and Rehabbing Water Assets

32 D uke University’s Nicholas Institute: Providing Data to Everyone From Utility Managers to Citizen Scientists

Do you have a story idea for an upcoming issue? Contact our editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

Copyright © 2021 Water Strategies LLC. Municipal Water Leader relies on the excellent contributions of a variety of natural resources professionals who provide content for the magazine. However, the views and opinions expressed by these contributors are solely those of the original contributor and do not necessarily represent or reflect the policies or positions of Municipal Water Leader magazine, its editors, or Water Strategies LLC. The acceptance and use of advertisements in Municipal Water Leader do not constitute a representation or warranty

by Water Strategies LLC or Municipal Water Leader magazine regarding the products, services, claims, or companies advertised.

4 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | April 2022

SUBMISSIONS:

Municipal Water Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions; the right to edit or deny publishing submissions is reserved. Submissions are returned only upon request. For more information, please contact our office at (202) 698-0690 or municipal.water.leader@waterstrategies.com.

ADVERTISING:

Municipal Water Leader accepts half-page and full-page ads. For more information on rates and placement, please contact Kris Polly at (703) 517-3962 or kris.polly@waterstrategies.com or Tom Wacker at tom.wacker@waterstrategies.com.

CIRCULATION:

Municipal Water Leader is distributed to all drinking water and wastewater entities with annual budgets or sales of $10 million per year or greater as well as to members of Congress and committee staff and advertising sponsors.

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COVER PHOTO:

John Entsminger, General Manager, Southern Nevada Water Authority. Photo courtesy of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SOUTHERN NEVADA WATER AUTHORITY.

38 JOB LISTINGS

Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief Joshua Dill, Managing Editor Jeff Kightlinger, Contributing Editor Elaine Robbins, Copyeditor Tyler Young, Writer Stephanie Biddle, Graphic Designer Eliza Moreno, Web Designer Caroline Polly, Production Assistant and Social Media Coordinator Tom Wacker, Advertising Coordinator Cassandra Leonard, Staff Assistant Eve Giordano, Media Assistant William Polly, Media Assistant Milo Schmitt, Media Assistant Amanda Schulz, Media Assistant

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Negotiating the Agreements of the Future

By Kris Polly

T

his month, Municipal Water Leader Contributing Editor Jeff Kightlinger interviews a major figure in the world of water: John Entsminger, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

Mr. Entsminger discusses the history behind the Drought Contingency Plan and the new 500+ Plan and the need for leadership as these and other major Colorado River basin agreements come closer to their expiration in 2026.

We also speak with Max Silva of A&W Maintenance, the master applicator for Warren Environmental epoxy products, about the many applications of Warren’s coatings and how A&W rehabilitated and coated 5,000 feet of water mains in the town of Milton, Massachusetts, whose diameter had previously been reduced from 10 to 4 inches by rust.

Next, we feature a group article on top current issues affecting western water by attorneys and government advocacy professionals from law and government relations firm Van Ness Feldman. Supreme Court decisions, drought, government regulations, forecasting technology, congressional legislation, and international negotiations—developments in all these fields stand to affect western water in the near future.

The presence in water of harmful per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, is an increasing concern for municipal water agencies across the nation. California-based

“

AqueoUS Vets has grown rapidly in recent years to become one of the biggest PFAS treatment system providers in the country. President and CEO Robert Craw tells us more.

Finally, we speak with Martin Doyle, the director of the Water Policy Program at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and a professor of river science and policy at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. Mr. Doyle tells us about the institute’s work to collect water data and make them accessible in a user-friendly format to everyone from utility managers to citizen scientists.

By finding leadership for crucial new agreements, rehabilitating vital infrastructure, informing the industry about current developments, addressing contaminants of emerging concern, and ensuring that necessary data are available to all, the water professionals we feature in this month’s issue are forging the industry’s future. M Kris Polly is the editor-in-chief of Municipal Water Leader magazine and the president and CEO of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies. He can be contacted at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

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The best lobbyist on your issues will always be you. All you need to be successful is the guidance of experienced people. That is what we provide.

Kris Polly, Water Strategies

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4 E Street SE • Washington, DC 20003 www.waterstrategies.com • (202) 698-0690 municipalwaterleader.com

April 2022 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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Southern Nevada Water Authority’s John Entsminger: Betting on the Future

Low elevations in Lake Mead.

A

s general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), John Entsminger leads the agency responsible for acquiring and distributing the Las Vegas region’s share of Colorado River water. In 2014, he was appointed

by Governor Sandoval to serve as Nevada’s lead negotiator on Colorado River matters, and he played a key role in developing interbasin and international agreements to protect Lake Mead water elevations. In this interview, Municipal Water Leader contributing editor Jeff Kightlinger speaks with Mr. Entsminger about negotiations over sharing a dwindling resource—and what it will take to “make this river work for everybody.”

Jeff Kightlinger: Much has happened on the Colorado River since Municipal Water Leader last spoke with you in 2019. As droughts have gotten worse, the Drought Contingency Plan (DCP) has been implemented. What has changed over the last 3 years?

Jeff Kightlinger: Please tell us about the DCP and how it led to the 500+ Plan.

6 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | April 2022

Jeff Kightlinger: Please discuss the 500+ Plan.

John Entsminger: If you’re going to try to put additional protections in place, everybody has to agree what you’re measuring against. The June 2021 24‑month study made certain assumptions about how much water would be delivered, how much intentionally created surplus (ICS) would be created, and how much ICS would be delivered. We’re going to measure against that baseline, and during calendar years 2022 and 2023, we’re going to try to leave 500,000 acre-feet over that baseline in Lake Mead —hence the name 500+ Plan.

For example, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SNWA.

John Entsminger: In the first half of 2019, one of the biggest concerns was that the hydrology might be so good that we would lose the momentum to get the deal done. That was followed by bad water years in 2020 and 2021, which I believe were the driest back-to-back years in recorded history, eclipsing 2012 and 2013. That’s caused a rapid decrease in the elevations of both Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and over the last 6 months or so, the lower basin has come to the table to try to add another layer of protection to the reservoirs in the form of the 500+ Plan.

John Entsminger: The protections we have put in place, just for the lower basin, are the shortage volumes that we agreed to as part of the 2007 guidelines, when we started seeing the modeling and realizing that shortages of 333,000 acre-feet, 420,000 acre-feet, and 500,000 acre-feet—which come into force at the elevations of 1,075 feet, 1,050 feet, and 1,025 feet, respectively—might be insufficient to protect critical elevations.

One provision of the DCP, which we negotiated from 2015 to 2019, stated that if one of our 24‑month studies projected that Lake Mead elevations would drop between 1,030 feet during any month, we would come back to the table and try to negotiate additional measures to protect the elevation of 1,025 feet. I don’t know whether to say this is ironic or serendipitous, but the August 2021 study that formally triggered the first-ever shortage declaration under the 2007 guidelines also projected the possibility of Lake Mead going below 1,030 feet within the next 24 months, thereby triggering the consultation provision that led to the negotiation of the 500+ Plan.

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California was projected to take 123,000 acre-feet of ICS in 2023, but it made the commitment to take less, so the amount it has agreed not to take out of the lake accrues toward that goal of 500+. The plan also includes additional ICS creation and system conservation, so it’s a combination of people agreeing to leave water in the reservoir and becoming more efficient with what they do take.

Jeff Kightlinger: When the DCP was developed, negotiators were looking back at the 2007 guidelines and trying to return to certain previously assessed levels of risk. Was the 500+ Plan developed with a similar goal of returning to a specific level of risk of severe shortage?

John Entsminger: When we did the modeling for the 2007 guideline negotiations, there was a 4 percent chance of falling below a certain target elevation—I think either 1,025 or 1,000 feet—between 2007 and 2026. When we came together to negotiate the DCP, that risk had gone from 4 percent to more than 20–25 percent. That increased risk is what led us to negotiate those additional protection volumes. You’re exactly right: With the horrible hydrology that we saw in 2020 and early in 2021, that risk profile changed again, and both the Central Arizona Project (CAP) and SNWA did independent modeling of the volumes that would need to be conserved to protect those critical elevations. That was the genesis of the 500,000‑acre-foot quantity that the 500+ Plan is built around.

Jeff Kightlinger: The 2007 guidelines, the DCP, and the 500+ Plan all expire in 2026, so there’s quite a bit of work municipalwaterleader.com

Elevations in Lake Mead over time.

that must happen between now and 2026. How do you see that process developing?

John Entsminger: In addition to those three agreements, Minute 323, the Colorado River water-sharing agreement between the United States and Mexico, will also come to an end at the same time. There is a lot of work that needs to be done. At some point, the Biden administration is going to need to start the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process for analyzing river operations in a post‑2026 scenario. If the basin states do not negotiate and agree to operating criteria for a post‑2026 world and analyze them under NEPA and the Endangered Species Act, then under the 2007 guidelines, we simply revert to long-range operating criteria. That does away with April 2022 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT U.S. Department of the Interior to set the agenda for what we’re going to accomplish and on what time frame.

Left to our own devices, that big tent of people will take whatever amount of time we’re allowed to negotiate.

Historically, we’ve done a lot of 5‑year negotiations to come up with 5‑year agreements, and even then, they only get signed when we are threatened by Interior. Does the Biden administration want to get to a record of decision by the end of its term in office? Does it want to get to a point at which it has the alternatives drafted but hasn’t selected a preferred alternative? Will it leave it to the next administration to get the deal across the finish line?

Those fundamental decisions need to be made and clearly conveyed to all the stakeholders so that we can get to work.

Jeff Kightlinger: Discussions about the Colorado River have long included tribes and NGOs, including environmental groups. Now, those discussions seem to have gained intensity and attracted a lot more interest from broader stakeholder groups. Do you see this round of negotiations potentially being different in that way?

An aerial view of Lake Mead.

shortage agreements and introduces a lot of uncertainty into the system. It wouldn’t allow for the future creation of ICS, although there are some trailing provisions that would allow access to ICS that had already been created.

It would put in place rigid operating restrictions at Lake Powell and Lake Mead. So the stakes are high. As you know, there will need to be negotiations among the upper and lower basin states. Ultimately, the seven states will need to come together. That group then needs to figure out how to work with our partners in Mexico and how to address the legitimate concerns of 29 Native American tribes and a lot of high-profile national nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It’s a big tent that everybody has to be able to fit into, and we need to figure out how we’re going to make it work.

Jeff Kightlinger: What do you think you need from the federal government to achieve success by 2026?

8 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | April 2022

Jeff Kightlinger: The distinction between partners and stakeholders is important, and it makes a lot of sense on the river. Speaking of partners, SNWA recently entered a partnership collaboration with Metropolitan on a regional recycled program. Tell us about your hopes for that program.

John Entsminger: First, I want to talk about the partnership between us at SNWA and Metropolitan, because I think it’s been the most important partnership SNWA has on the river. It goes back to our water-banking arrangements. There have been times in the past when the State Water Project was down and we had extra water that we were able to lend.

We worked together on the Drop 2 Reservoir and on the Yuma Desalting Plant’s pilot run, and we were municipal investors under Minute 319 and Minute 323. We were founding members of the system conservation efforts that have saved water in all seven states. municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SNWA.

John Entsminger: Fortunately, I think we have a once-ina-generation infusion of cash. In my career, I’ve never seen the Bureau of Reclamation running around with $8–$9 billion, which it has right now. But more than anything, we’re going to need leaders. We need the

John Entsminger: I think there are a lot more groups that are more sophisticated; have more experience; and frankly, are bringing more resources to the table. Two guys with a laptop who only bring opinions to the table are not going to be as valuable as some of these big environmental groups that not only have monetary resources but the legislative skills to help you push things across the finish line in Congress. They’re the ones with deep relationships with Mexico. When people ask me, “How are you going to work with all these different groups?” my question is, “What are they bringing to the table?” It’s a free country, and under the NEPA process, anybody and everybody can make their opinions known. But if the only thing you’re bringing to the table is your opinion, it’s not going to be the most useful thing to help us get to the finish line.

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The Colorado River.

The regional recycling project is a $3–$4 billion project to capture and reuse all the wastewater in Southern California.

The overall idea is to make more water available in Southern California. My board has already voted to appropriate an additional $750 million for major capital projects to be a funder of that. I think it’s a poster child for the types of partnerships and investments that need to be made in the southwestern United States in the face of climate change and diminishing water supplies.

Jeff Kightlinger: Do you think that is the kind of project that is going to be needed to come up with a successful agreement by 2026 on how to deal with upcoming shortages on the river?

John Entsminger: Yes, absolutely. I think that if the water users across the basin remain in their own silos and just hope for the best—as we’ve seen on the Klamath and in the Central Valley of California, where the federal government has acted unilaterally—eventually, there will be no option left but for the federal government to pick winners and losers. If we want any sort of voice and control over our own destinies, we must forge these partnerships. We have to do unpopular things like raising water rates so that we have the financial resources to make these sorts of investments and continue to have some control over our own future.

Jeff Kightlinger: Climate change really seems to be in the driver’s seat these days, particularly on the Colorado River.

What do you think we’re going to have to do to really make the river sustainable as part of these 2026 discussions?

John Entsminger: Though this may apply more broadly, I’ll use SNWA as a microcosm. Our board approved a new resource plan in December 2021. We had been using the figure of 12.9 million acre-feet of average annual flow as our municipalwaterleader.com

climate change projection in our previous years’ resource plans. We changed that to 11 million acre-feet a year for 2021 resource planning. That may seem aggressive to some, but when you think about it, in 9 of the last 22 years, we have had less than 11 million acre-feet of inflow on the river. Frankly, we’re hopeful that 11 million is the worst-case scenario. If we were to have 11‑million-acre-foot inflows over the next 50 years, the elevations of Lake Mead would bounce around between 900 and 950 feet. Our resource plans include other scenarios that are rosier than that, but it’s important to include a worst-case climate change projection. In a scenario like that, to preserve economic diversification and a robust economy in southern Nevada, we project that we would need to drive our gallons per capita per day down from the current level of 112 to 86. That is a long way of saying that I believe the future of this river requires every person in every sector to figure out a way to use less water. That doesn’t necessarily mean less agriculture.

SNWA is partnering on with CAP, the Central Utah Water Conservancy District, and Denver Water to look at how we can grow alfalfa with drip irrigation. It’s not necessarily a question of not having economic growth or not producing the amount of food we need; it’s figuring out how to do those things using less water.

Jeff Kightlinger: In the 1960s and 1970s, Arizona and California went to the Supreme Court and had a lot of battles and litigation on the river. Starting around 2000, we saw much more cooperation. In the future, do you think you’re going to see more collaboration among the states, or will it be a zero-sum game in which people are going to start bringing out their lawyers?

John Entsminger: I’m hopeful. I think the people who are at the negotiating table realize that you can negotiate for decades and not add another gallon of water to the river.

Litigation isn’t going to substantively change the situation.

I am a true believer in the cooperative process. We’ve seen Minute 319 between the United States and Mexico work.

I have a copy in my office that’s translated into Russian because the Colorado River has been used as a model for national and international cooperation. I believe that collaboration is far and away the best course of action for the river going forward. It will be extremely difficult, but if people of goodwill can come together, I still believe we can make this river work for everybody. M

John Entsminger is the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

He can be contacted at 1001 S. Valley View Boulevard, Las Vegas, Nevada, 89153.

April 2022 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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Max Silva of A&W Maintenance: Protecting and Rehabbing Water Assets

One of the Town of Milton’s 10-inch pipes, before and after treatment

by A&W Maintenance.

M

unicipal water leaders who are dealing with corrosion issues seek safe and long-lasting solutions to protect their water, wastewater, and storm water systems.

Municipal Water Leader spoke with Max Silva, a senior project manager at A&W Maintenance and Coatings LLC, the master applicator for Warren Environmental’s 100 percent solids, high-build epoxy products, about his company’s approach to protecting these valuable assets.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Municipal Water Leader: Please introduce A&W and Warren’s products and services.

14 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | April 2022

Max Silva: Warren Environmental is a manufacturer of epoxy products used in municipal potable water and wastewater applications, as well as industrial, marine, and chemical applications for protecting assets such as steel, concrete, and a variety of substrates. Warren manufactures and distributes various lines of products. The primary product is the 301 series of environmental epoxies. These are specialized epoxies that have been around since the early 1990s. The 301 series has been used across the United States and in Mexico, Europe, Australia, and Canada. A&W was founded as a painting contractor in the 1980s by the same owner who started Warren Environmental. He experimented with different resins and products and came up with the products that are now manufactured by Warren Environmental. Since then, that is all that A&W has applied. We believe that the world’s most precious resources are water and people, and we think protecting the assets that carry, treat, and hold water with a high-quality, long-lasting coating system that is safe for the environment and the life in it is extremely important.

Municipal Water Leader: Please give a sense of the range of assets that are generally rehabilitated with your epoxy coatings.

Max Silva: A&W is a coatings contractor. We work on a variety of projects, municipal and industrial, new and rehabilitation. We are frequently hired to do work at treatment plants, for example. A lot of new treatment plants are getting built, and all their clarifiers, digesters, pipelines, gravity thickeners, and so on are built with new concrete. Some owners municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF A&W MAINTENANCE.

Max Silva: I’ve been working for A&W Maintenance and Coatings and Warren Environmental since early 2013.

I graduated from Boston University with a degree in business administration in 2012 and started working for A&W and Warren right out of college. I’ve held several roles over the past 8 years. I’ve done a lot of work in the field, applying the product myself; I’ve managed crews in the field on various applications of the product; and now, I’ve transitioned into a management role as a senior project manager for A&W. I’m responsible for operations in the eastern United States. We have offices in Atlanta, Georgia, and Middleborough, Massachusetts. Those are just home bases, as we are a mobile specialty contractor with crews that travel 85 percent of the year.

One of the points at which the A&W team accessed Milton’s pipes.

ADVERTISEMENT want to be proactive in protecting that concrete because they know it’s going to erode and be exposed to chemical attack over time, so they will specify an epoxy or some other system to be applied after the concrete has cured. There are a lot of plants that have been around for 50 years with coating systems that are now completely gone, flaking off, or delaminating.

In that case, we would clean the surface of the concrete tank, steel structure, or whatever it is, re‑prep it, and then apply the Warren product. Typically, the difference between new and older applications is how thickly the epoxy is applied. New assets are already structurally sound, so they just need a barrier coat and something to protect it from chemical attack, which occurs naturally in wastewater and potable distribution and treatmeant facilities. In rehab projects, there’s usually a lot of aggregate showing and concrete loss. Generally, in those cases, it is wise for an owner to apply a thicker coating—say a quarter of an inch or 250 mils.

On the industrial side, there are also many assets exposed to chemical attack or other forms of degradation.

There are facilities where treated and untreated water are mixed together in a tank so that it can be diluted enough to be distributed via a water system. Those tanks often experience some level of degradation, especially if they are not coated. I’ve also seen leaching of steel holding tanks used to store chemicals in paper plants and waste management facilities. Owners also put substances in water to treat it that are also corrosive. We also put epoxy coatings on wastewater sewer manholes. Manholes in the ground need protection from hydrogen sulfide gas. So do lift stations and pump stations, both new and old, and large-diameter pipelines.

We’ve done a lot of large-diameter concrete and steel pipelines for which a trenchless solution is the best option for the owner. Whether because infrastructure has been built around the pipeline over the years or there are a lot of utilities around the pipeline, digging and replacing isn’t a great option. Using a trenchless solution, we can work from manhole to manhole without any disruption on the surface.

Our applications are fast: We just need to clean the surface, apply the epoxy, test the epoxy, and then we’re done. Warren epoxy has a tenacious mechanical bond to the inside of the asset that will protect it for 75 years or more.

Municipal Water Leader: Are the potable water tanks and pipes you rehabilitate generally made of steel, or are some of them concrete?

Max Silva: We see both steel and concrete tanks. Some potable water facilities, for example, have big reservoirs and treat the water in large concrete channels with chlorine before it goes into the plant. That chlorine gas corrodes concrete.

Municipal Water Leader: What are the reasons that potable water treatment and conveyance facilities need rehabilitation? municipalwaterleader.com

Milton's severly tuberculated pipes had been reduced from a 10-inch diameter to a 4-inch diameter by rust buildup.

Max Silva: These types of facilities usually require coatings because of corrosion, erosion, or age. Taking down an asset for repairs or replacement is expensive and costly to the shareholders who rely on the asset. Over time, water and chemical attack wears down concrete and steel. When aggregate gets exposed, you run the risk of developing a structural issue. Warren epoxy is a chemical barrier as well as an erosion barrier.

Municipal Water Leader: Please walk us through the process of installing a coating.

Max Silva: A Warren epoxy application requires a clean surface free of any loose debris or dirt. On concrete, we’ll use high-pressure water, typically 5,000–6,000 pounds per square inch (psi) with a turbo tip. That mills off any loose debris on the surface and opens the pores of the concrete to allow for a surface profile. We also need to make sure there are no salts or laitance on the surface. Laitance is a natural occurrence in concrete. It comes to the surface of concrete when it cures—it’s almost like a cream layer. We remove it with a muriatic acid solution or abrasive blasting. With steel, we perform abrasive blasting or media blasting following the Warren specification. After the surface preparation, we can spray-apply, trowel-apply, or spin-cast-apply our epoxy, depending on the application. Most of the time, we spray it through plural component spray equipment, all through a patented Warren system.

The thickness of the epoxy depends on each project.

Usually, for newer applications or newer assets, you only need around a 1/8‑inch-thick coating, because you’re just protecting it from chemical attack. For more seriously deteriorated assets, we’ll use a thicker coating: 250 mils, April 2022 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

| 15

ADVERTISEMENT or ¼-inch thick, or thicker. The 301 product line can be produced in different viscosities or thicknesses.

For both concrete and steel, we’ll always do post-cure testing and inspection. After we spray the epoxy, it will take 4–6 hours, depending on ambient conditions, to be hard enough to the touch for us to do our testing. We start with spark testing, also called holiday testing. The testing device sparks and makes a noise wherever there’s a void in the coating. That void could have been caused when a technician missed a spot while spraying or could be a natural defect, such as a pinhole in the coating. The spark tester allows us to locate those voids and touch them up. We also do an adhesion test. We glue a dolly onto the surface of the coating and use a testing device that pulls the dolly off and tells us the psi of adhesion the coating has to the substrate. We also use wet-film gauges to tell us how thickly we’re applying the coating during application.

It is also possible to do post-cure thickness testing with ultrasonic equipment.

Municipal Water Leader: What can you tell us about the epoxy products’ safety for the environment and human health?

Municipal Water Leader: Is there anything you would like to add about the Warren product?

Max Silva: There are always a lot of things to consider in a coating project, such as the bypassing of lines. To enable a larger-scale rehab project, the owner generally has to shut off the asset. At the same time, they need to move water, and there’s still wastewater coming in that needs to be treated.

This means that the owner must install large, expensive bypass systems. The longer the systems are set up, the greater the cost to the owner and their stakeholders. One of the things that owners like about the Warren product and about A&W as a contractor is that our system is faster. Our singlecoat system has fast curing times and enables a fast return to service. That is a benefit from an owner’s perspective. The other advantage is safety. There’s no odor, no VOCs, and no solvents with the Warren product, so there’s no reason that other contractors can’t work near us. We may be rehabbing a tank while other contractors are replacing the rake arms and baffle walls and putting in new handrails. That adds to the time-savings factor, which ultimately ends up saving money for the owner. M Max Silva is a senior project manager at A&W Maintenance and Coatings. For more about A&W, visit awmain.com.

Municipal Water Leader: Please discuss your work on the pipe rehab project in Milton, Massachusetts.

16 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | April 2022

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF A&W MAINTENANCE.

Max Silva: The Warren products are 100 percent solids epoxy coatings. That means that there are no solvents in the coating at all. A lot of coating systems require solvent to be added before they can be sprayed. Warren was the first to develop a system, now patented, in which you could spray 100 percent solids epoxies without solvents. Solvents in coatings can pose challenges for a few reasons. The first is that they’re flammable.

A lot of our work is done in confined spaces, tunnels, and tanks. Having anything flammable in that environment poses potential safety risks for the workers. Solvents also need to evaporate out of a coating while it’s curing. That reduces its dry-film thickness, so you need to apply additional coats. The Warren system doesn’t require solvents, so you can just spray it on, and the wet-film thickness is the same as the dry-film thickness. Finally, if solvents are evaporating from a coating system in highly humid environments, the solvents have nowhere to go and can be trapped in the coating, preventing it from curing or causing other defects.

Warren products are also free from volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are hazardous to the environment. Ours is the only epoxy that’s aquatic safe.

Aquatic safe is an American Society for Testing and Materials standard that has to do with leaching harmful compounds into a water system. If you’re applying a product to a structure that’s going to carry material to a river or other waterway, you don’t want anything leaching out of the coating over time that will affect wildlife. Warren Epoxy has passed that test and does not leach anything harmful.

Max Silva: The town of Milton had aggressive tuberculation in approximately 5,000 lineal feet of cast-iron water mains that went through the town. Tuberculation refers to a situation in which a 10‑inch drinking water pipe can be reduced to a 4‑inch pipe because of the buildup of rust inside. The town wanted the pipes cleaned and protected so there wouldn’t be any more buildup in the future. It opened the pipe at valves so that it could replace the valves and give us access. We were able to clean the pipes remotely and remove all the tuberculation with back-and-forth scrapers, high-pressure water, and pigging, restoring them to their original diameter. Then, we used Warren spin-casting equipment, which is a remotely operated caster of epoxy. We sent a skid down the pipe and then used a reel to retract the spinner head as it spin-cast the epoxy on the walls of the pipe. The machine is simple to operate because it’s all computerized. You essentially enter the length and diameter of the pipe and the desired epoxy thickness, and the computer does the rest of the operation. When you’re doing a spin-cast application like that in a water main, the biggest fear is that you’re going to plug the laterals that go to each house. If you did a cure-in-place liner, you’d have to go back and cut all those out individually, but when you spin-cast epoxy, it doesn’t plug them up. Once the pipe is lined, you just need to do a video inspection and you’re good to go.

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Heads Above Water: Opportunities and Challenges for Western Water

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upreme Court decisions, drought, government regulations, forecasting technology, congressional legislation, and international negotiations—all are critical for western water users; all are subject to rapid change. In this group article, Van Ness Feldman’s team of attorneys and government advocacy professionals highlight developments in water law and public policy of interest to the water community.

Defining Waters of the United States

20 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | April 2022

Western Water Allocation

By Jenna Mandell-Rice, Partner Drought has plagued large portions of the West for the last several years.

Water allocations to water suppliers and irrigation districts that rely on water from federal water projects have been significantly reduced.

For example, the Central Valley Project, which provides water to California, was reduced to pumping at minimum levels for health and safety for the majority of 2021. There was also a tier 1 water shortage on the Colorado River, which reduced deliveries to Arizona and Nevada. Reduced water allocations threaten not just agricultural production, but also the ability of water suppliers to meet basic public health and safety needs. Entities that have their own water rights are also threatened by scarcity, particularly if their rights were more recently established.

The increasing incidence of drought demonstrates the need for regulatory systems and programs that incentivize conservation and more easily allow the redistribution of conserved water. In December 2021, water agencies municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF NYX NING, LICENSED UNDER CC BY-SA 3.0 AND VAN NESS FELDMAN.

By Rachael Lipinski, Associate Two developments—a U.S. Supreme Court case and an ongoing agency rulemaking—are poised to change the definition of Waters of the United States (WOTUS) under the Clean Water Act (CWA). The WOTUS definition establishes the geographic scope for jurisdiction under the CWA, affecting myriad regulatory issues, including the applicability of water quality standards; impaired waters and total maximum daily loads; oil-spill prevention, preparedness, and response programs; state and tribal water quality certification programs; National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit requirements; and dredge and fill permit requirements. Since the CWA does not define WOTUS, it is open to statutory interpretation and agency rulemaking, resulting in extensive litigation.

First, and most recently, on January 24, 2022, the Supreme Court granted a petition for writ of certiorari in Sackett v. EPA (Docket No. 21‑454), a long-evolving case concerning whether certain wetlands constitute WOTUS under the CWA. That case involves an Idaho family’s attempt to build a house on land that the federal government has found includes federal waters and raises questions about the federal government’s ability to broadly define WOTUS. Second, on November 18, 2021, just months before the Supreme Court’s announcement, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a prepublication version of

their proposed rule defining WOTUS under the CWA. This proposed rule unwinds much of the 2020 Navigable Waters Protection Rule, issued during the Trump administration, and restores the regulations in effect prior to the Obama administration’s 2015 rule, as informed by Supreme Court case law. Notably, the proposed rule is part of a two-part rulemaking process, and the EPA and the Army Corps anticipate developing a second rule that could consider more categorical approaches to jurisdiction.

The EPA and the Army Corps have indicated that they will continue with the rulemaking process. However, the outcome of the Supreme Court case could potentially moot the rulemakings, as the Supreme Court could narrow the scope of what constitutes WOTUS. For now, the regulated community’s search for a clear and durable definition of WOTUS continues.

ADVERTISEMENT across Arizona, California, and Nevada, together with the U.S. Department of the Interior, announced an investment of up to $200 million in projects to conserve water across the Lower Colorado River basin. Regulatory programs that already exist or are developing in western states allow for water banking, trading, and leasing, which facilitate the redistribution of water.

Understanding how to navigate the various opportunities for the conservation and redistribution of water, which vary state by state, will be of increasing importance to water suppliers and water users. These tools, if used effectively, can benefit not only those who need more water, but also those who are not currently using their water rights and who may otherwise face the possibility of the relinquishment of their rights for nonuse.

Streamlining Small Hydro Development

By Mike Swiger, Partner Until recently, hydropower has been the largest source of emissions-free energy in the United States. Unlike most other renewable energy sources, such as solar and onshore wind, the siting of hydropower plants is heavily regulated through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) licensing process, which can be expensive, lengthy, and uncertain and has become a substantial barrier to new hydropower development.

Recognizing this problem, in 2013 Congress passed the Hydropower Regulatory Efficiency Act (HREA) to encourage development of small and low-impact hydropower.

Among the improvements were a new type of exemption from FERC licensing jurisdiction for projects sized at 5 megawatts or less and located on nonfederally owned conduits, such as tunnels, canals, pipelines, aqueducts, flumes, ditches, or similar manmade conveyances that are operated for the distribution of water for agricultural, municipal, or industrial consumption. In 2018, Congress increased the maximum size of projects covered by the exemption to 40 megawatts. In implementing the statute, FERC has held that its preexisting regulations governing small conduit exemptions from licensing—the term exemption was already used to refer to a form of FERC authorization available prior to the HREA—also apply to qualifying small conduit facilities under the HREA. This has added another layer of qualifying criteria not expressly set forth in the statute itself.

However, FERC has interpreted these requirements liberally, based on Congress’s intent to promote small hydro production as an incidental use of existing water supply infrastructure.

The HREA established a highly streamlined process requiring an applicant for a qualifying facility to file a notice of intent (NOI) to construct the facility with FERC. The NOI must demonstrate that the facility meets statutory and regulatory criteria. Within 15 days after this filing, FERC municipalwaterleader.com

must make an initial determination that the project meets the criteria and, if it does, FERC must issue a 30‑day public notice of the application. If FERC’s initial determination is uncontested, then the facility is automatically qualified, and construction can proceed. In the event it is contested, FERC must promptly issue a final determination. Since generally there are no stakeholders motivated to contest this type of project, the entire qualification process takes a matter of weeks, not years, as would a typical FERC authorization.

Water and sewer utilities, irrigation districts, and other water suppliers can add hydroelectric generation to their existing infrastructure using the low-cost, timely, and simplified HREA process. Power can be used for pumping or can be sold into the market to help make the cost of water delivery more economical. Understanding how FERC’s qualifying criteria apply to the specific facts of each case is key to achieving the right result.

Advances in Western Weather Forecasting and Water Management

By Jordan Smith, Principal, Governmental Issues The western United States experiences some of the most variable weather in the nation, with conditions of extreme drought and floods that at times alternate from one year to the next. Such fluctuations in precipitation highlight the extent to which access to the latest forecasting and environmental data is necessary for improved reservoir operations, not only to increase water supply while maintaining critical flood control but to enhance public safety during extreme weather events.

Most precipitation in the West can be attributed to atmospheric rivers (ARs), storms that form in the Pacific Ocean and make landfall along the coast. Predicting the timing and intensity of ARs is essential in giving water managers and dam operators the information they need with enough lead time to prepare for precipitation events. Over the past decade, meteorological research has led to important breakthroughs in understanding and forecasting ARs. Two tools are critical for the improved forecasting of western precipitation and adequately managing the operation of the region’s reservoirs. While for many decades the scientific community was not able to offer dependable forecasts more than a week or two in advance, advances in subseasonal to seasonal (S2S) forecasting are increasingly providing state and local water managers with reliable extended precipitation outlooks. These subseasonal (2‑ to 6‑week) to seasonal (2‑ to 6‑month) projections fill an important gap between weather and climate forecasting and represent a central component of seamless short-term and long-term predictions.

In addition, for nearly a decade, a team of multiagency, cross-disciplinary experts have been exploring improved forecast-informed reservoir operations (FIRO), a strategy April 2022 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT aimed at supporting better-informed decisions about retaining or releasing water as well as integrating additional flexibility in operation policies and rules by providing enhanced monitoring and improved weather and water forecasts. With successful testing in California’s Russian River basin (Lake Mendocino), the Santa Ana River basin (Prado Dam), and the Yuba-Feather River basin, FIRO has received national recognition and is expected to be a critical tool for improved reservoir management.

Federal policymakers are increasingly acknowledging the important role of both S2S forecasting and FIRO in the future of weather prediction and water management and have provided programmatic opportunities as well as funding to support and advance these initiatives in recent years. A growing number of stakeholders are engaging Congress and the administration to further support these initiatives to benefit communities affected by extreme weather and associated uncertain water supply throughout the West.

Unprecedented Federal Investment in Water Infrastructure

22 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | April 2022

Modernizing the Columbia River Treaty

By Rick Agnew, Partner Another major natural resource policy issue pending for the Biden administration is the challenge of modernizing the Columbia River Treaty, a major transboundary water management agreement between the United States and Canada to manage flood control risks and related coordinated operations in the expansive Columbia River basin. Since 1964, the Columbia River Treaty has served to help manage flood risks and share estimated hydroelectric generation attributable to additional storage in Canada.

In recent years, controversy has arisen over whether the treaty’s benefits tilt too much toward Canada, whether tribal interests are adequately represented in treaty-based decisions, and whether the treaty adequately considers ecosystem needs in the basin.

The treaty has no specific end date. Each country has the unilateral right, with 10 years’ notice, to terminate the power provisions. Also, in 2024, the flood risk management provisions will change to called upon status, under which the United States is to use domestic flood control measures before calling upon Canada for assistance. Canada is required to provide flood control assistance but is to be paid for the measures taken, presumably through payments from U.S. appropriations, although there is no specific delineation in the treaty of the amounts or methodology for these payments.

Well before the treaty’s 60th anniversary in 2024, U.S. interests began calling for revisions, particularly to the treaty’s power provisions, which are the basis of the transfer to Canada of electric power representing the value of coordinated operations. Stakeholder discussions resulted in 2013 in a regional recommendation that called for significant changes in the treaty. The United States and Canada began formal negotiations in 2018. Spurred by a unified congressional delegation, the negotiations resumed recently, with no agreement yet in sight. U.S. interests are pressing for a prompt conclusion of negotiations to reach an outcome that is successful from the perspective of U.S. stakeholders.

For More Information

Van Ness Feldman’s water team has extensive, multidisciplinary capabilities in matters involving the acquisition, distribution, regulation, use, and protection of water, including complex issues involving federal, state, and local regulatory requirements and public policy. For more information regarding the topics above or other matters related to water law and policy, please contact any of our contributors or visit our website at www.vnf.com. M municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF VAN NESS FELDMAN.

By Sean Taylor, Senior Director, Governmental Issues On November 15, 2021, President Biden signed into law the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package that reauthorizes expiring grant and loan programs across the federal government, including the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Fund and the Water Infrastructure Financing and Innovation Act. The federal government’s historic investment in water infrastructure through the IIJA provides a one-time infusion of $55 billion in direct appropriations that will be allocated over the next 5 years to address aging infrastructure and emerging contaminants and support efforts to increase resiliency.

Federal agencies are in the process of creating or expanding existing programs to disseminate these funds to eligible infrastructure projects. Some existing federal accounts have already begun allocating funds to states through pre-existing formula grant programs, which are noncompetitive awards based on criteria such as population or need. Examples benefitting the water community include the EPA’s Clean and Drinking Water State Revolving Loan program.

One immediate challenge for federal agencies is vast staffing shortages. Additional grant personnel will be required to handle the influx of funds. This will be an issue for many agencies, including the EPA, which had drastic funding cuts and numerous staff departures in recent years.

Adding to the problem is the amount of time—an average of 98 days—that it takes for the federal government to hire new employees.

As agencies establish parameters and develop solicitations for new and existing programs, it has never been more

important for stakeholders to engage early with the appropriate agencies to ensure that solicitations are structured to enable projects to meet the criteria for funding awards.

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Rob Craw of AqueoUS Vets: Treating PFAS Nationwide

AqueoUS Vets’ manufacturing plant in Redding, California.

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here’s trouble in the water as contaminants like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) show up in public water systems across the United States. As municipalities confront the extent of the problem, they are turning to companies that design treatment systems that remove these substances from drinking water. In this interview, Municipal Water Leader speaks with Rob Craw, CEO of one of the largest of those companies, AqueoUS Vets (AV).

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and why you started AV.

24 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | April 2022

Municipal Water Leader: What are some of the PFAS projects you have carried out?

Rob Craw: In 2016, California American Water, a subsidiary of American Water, solicited a project that involved treating PFAS at the Nut Plains well site in Rancho Cordova, California. The treatment system for this specific project had to be less than 16 feet in overall height to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act permitting process.

We custom-designed the systems for American Water to meet the overall height without sacrificing the treatment capabilities of the system. This system was the first PFAS potable water treatment plant in California.

Municipal Water Leader: Tell us about the system you installed for the Yorba Linda Water District.

Rob Craw: Several of the Orange County Water District’s 19 water purveyors were affected by PFAS. In 2019, the municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF AQUEOUS VETS.

Rob Craw: After I left the military and finishing my schooling, I was hired by another vet to work at Westates Carbon. I started on the shop floor and then moved into managing operations, then application engineering, and then sales and marketing. In 1997, USFilter acquired Westates, and I gained new responsibilities, including managing the western United States until my departure at the end of 2005.

Later, I worked for other water and wastewater companies, including Purolite and Underground Solutions.

I started AV in 2015 without much of a vision for what it was going to be. However, through a series of meetings with the California Water Service Company, I helped the company develop specifications for its new 1,2,3‑Trichloropropane (TCP) emerging contaminant initiative in Bakersfield. It was after that that I decided to open a manufacturing plant in Redding, California, in 2016. Shortly after that, we won our first job with the City

of Pomona. Since then, we’ve continued to build the business.

About 6 months after we opened the shop, we learned about PFAS. I thought I was going to build a nice local business in California, treating groundwater, but as the PFAS market grew, it accelerated our growth.

From 2016 to 2021, we went from being a small startup to being the largest PFAS solutions provider in the western United States. The market lacked leadership that could provide a complete concept-to-commission approach focused on the end user while guaranteeing the lowest cost of ownership. Our approach is to be a team member that provides treatment systems and, when appropriate, prefiltration, ancillary piping systems, and chemical feed. We broaden the offer, which provides us a greater opportunity to bring value to the project owner. Our goal is to provide the owner what they need to attain treatment goals at the lowest cost of ownership.

ADVERTISEMENT district solicited AV, Evoqua, and Calgon to provide 75 twelve‑foot-diameter systems to remove PFAS contaminants. At the time, the district didn’t know whether the systems were going to be carbon or ion exchange, but it wanted to preprocure them to solidify pricing and have them available as the sites were ready to receive them.

The district was thoughtful in its process; it selected two providers out of the three to minimize potential supply chain risks and ended up splitting the order between the two providers. We ended up with Yorba Linda and, to date, have been contracted to build 33 systems. The largest project was for Yorba Linda, involving 11 ion-exchange systems that will treat 25 million gallons a day (MGD) with a peak capacity of 31 MGD. The system is now operating and treating PFAS-affected groundwater.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about how your systems have developed over the years?

Municipal Water Leader: What other contaminants does AV treat?

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about carbon versus ion exchange? Are they ever combined?

Rob Craw: We help treat a handful of emerging contaminants, including PFAS; 1,2,3-TCP, which is centric to California; and 1,4-Dioxane, for which we carry out residual hydrogen peroxide quenching. 1,4-Dioxane is present in pockets throughout the country. The treatment process for 1,4-Dioxane is typically an ultraviolet advanced oxidation process (UVAOP). AV is in the process of delivering the largest treatment plant for peroxide quenching in the country to the Los Angeles Department Water and Power, with a capacity of 80 MGD. The contaminated groundwater is treated with UVAOP, and our granular activated carbon systems remove the residual hydrogen peroxide before the water is sent into the distribution system.

Rob Craw: They can be used in treatment together. First, we evaluate the specific application, the flows, the water quality, and the size of the site. The total cost of ownership will include a detailed capital expenditure and operational expenditure evaluation for each option. The operational expenditure consists primarily of the difference in head loss across the system and associated energy costs and turnkey media exchange services over a 25- to 50‑year life cycle.

Rob Craw: AV is constantly improving our systems. In fact, this innovation process led to our patented LowPro design, which can affect the overall capital cost of a project. These systems, combined with our Concept to Commission program, are a game changer. It all begins when the client says, “We have a well that produces 2,000 gallons per minute, our PFAS concentration is X, our site constraints are Y, and we need these features customized. What can you recommend?” We provide standard or highly customized treatment designs, which can incorporate prefiltration and filtration, piping systems, and chemical feed systems. AV provides custom solutions for our clients at a standardized system price point.

Municipal Water Leader: Are climate change and water availability issues affecting your customers or changing how you market to them?

Rob Craw: Until 2020, it had primarily been California.

Since then, we have grown into Arizona; Florida; Oklahoma; Pennsylvania; South Carolina; Wisconsin; and most recently, New Jersey, where we are doing two urgent projects.

Rob Craw: PFAS is a leading contaminant on a national scale and should be concerning. It affects water that is used in potable applications, and therefore must be treated before use.

That can create a scarcity issue until funding is available. Our customers must be able to access capital, and as regulatory drivers continue to bear down on them, they have to access capital even more quickly. That will always be a challenge, especially as contaminants affect valuable water resources and new regulations emerge faster than they can finance.

Municipal Water Leader: Are there any limitations to going national?

Municipal Water Leader: What is your vision for the company’s future?

Rob Craw: No: PFAS is ubiquitous in the environment, and it’s in a lot of our water systems. There are regulatorydriven states such as California, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and others that are just starting their compliance efforts. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is still working through the regulatory process that will establish a maximum contaminant level, and that takes time. Within the dozen or so states where this work is already being done, there are hundreds of sites that require treatment.

Rob Craw: Our goal is to build AV into a nationally recognized brand that services markets coast to coast.

Municipal Water Leader: What is the geographic area that you operate in?

municipalwaterleader.com

M

Rob Craw is the president and CEO of AqueoUS Vets. He can be contacted at rcraw@aqueousvets.com.

April 2022 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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Duke University’s Nicholas Institute: Providing Data to Everyone From Utility Managers to Citizen Scientists

Grainger Hall, the home of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

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esearchers in the Water Policy Program at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions harness data to inform water policy. By identifying and collecting data on topics such as water utility rates, reservoir operations, and water quality and then making the data available in a uniform format, the Nicholas Institute advances scientific research and enables concerned citizens to inform themselves on important health issues. In this interview, Martin Doyle, the director of the Water Policy Program at the Nicholas Institute and a professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment, tells Municipal Water Leader about the institute’s work, its Internet of Water project, and its mission to make water data more accessible and user-friendly to everyone from utility managers to citizen scientists.

Martin Doyle: I’m trained as a hydraulic engineer and hydrologist. I got my master’s degree in engineering from the University of Mississippi and my PhD in earth science from Purdue University. I taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for about 10 years, and I’ve been

32 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | April 2022

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about the Nicholas Institute’s Water Policy Program?

Martin Doyle: The Water Policy Program is an interdisciplinary effort focused on using data to inform effective policy changes in how water is understood and managed. Our general approach is to start by assembling large data sets and then using them as a lens through which to look at policy. We have focused on the management of and financing of federal infrastructure, especially at the Bureau of Reclamation. We’ve spent a lot of time looking at how reservoir storage capacity is allocated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Our current work is focused municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO BY NSOE-COMM, LICENSED UNDER CC BY-SA 4.0.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

at Duke University for 10 years. I have a joint appointment at Duke. I am director of the Water Policy Program at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, an environmental policy think tank. I am also a professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment, where I run the degree program for water resources management students, from which about 20 students per year graduate with a master’s in water resources management. I also teach classes in hydrology and water infrastructure finance.

ADVERTISEMENT on municipal water affordability. We have researchers who focus specifically on policy development in the water space and data scientists who create large-scale data sets related to water management. Then we use those data sets to look at how different policy options may affect future water resources, and vice versa—how future water conditions may affect water policy options.

Municipal Water Leader: How do you identify the proper audience for your message and make sure that it reaches them?

Martin Doyle: That is the key question. We often find that state agencies are willing partners who are interested in insights, new data analysis, or new policies. From there, we can scale our message up to the federal government, scale it down to the local government, or translate it for the private sector.

People in state-level divisions of water resources or divisions of environmental quality are often our target audience, because they have to keep their eyes on the entire range of conditions and management options across their states.

The Duke University campus.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us more about your work on municipal water pricing.

Martin Doyle: Over the past couple of years, we have focused on trying to quantify the affordability of municipal water. All of us pay a water bill, but for some households in the United States, it’s a challenge. We looked at an enormous amount of data on rate structures and municipal water service areas.

Then one of my water data scientists, Lauren Patterson, came up with a clever way of combining a few public data sources to quantify a metric of water affordability at the block scale across the United States. We’ve applied this municipal water affordability metric to about 3,500 water utilities across the United States. That granularity has been a game-changer for understanding the scope of the problem of water affordability in the United States.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF JEREMY ASHTON AND WARREN LEMAY, LICENSED UNDER CC0 1.0.

Municipal Water Leader: Who is the audience for that project?

Martin Doyle: This project is targeted at municipal water leaders, mainly utility directors and finance directors from utility boards—the people who are responsible for setting rates. The other groups that we know are using it are investors and community activist groups that advocate on behalf of subsets of the population. Investors are starting to look at the affordability of utility bills as one factor in determining the risk of municipal bonds.

Municipal Water Leader: Tell us more about your work with the Army Corps.

Martin Doyle: Since the water sector is so fragmented, one of the things that we try to do is collate data policies and practices so that they can be looked at consistently, and municipalwaterleader.com

Duke University’s West Campus.

states or entities can see how other states or entities are managing their water. The Army Corps works on a federal model and is structured into several dozen districts. North Carolina, where I live, is in the Wilmington District. The Wilmington District is separate from the Savannah District, which is separate from the Mobile District. Each of these districts manages and operates its infrastructure slightly differently from the others. We were mainly interested in how reservoirs are operated and how different districts of the Army Corps manage their reservoirs in terms of storage, focusing especially on whether and how they are changing their storage practices in the face of climate change. We assembled a database of reservoir operations from across the United States and looked at how different districts made April 2022 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

| 33

ADVERTISEMENT decisions. This web-based visualization tool allows users to interact with the reservoir data and really see how different districts operate their infrastructure. This information also helps us better understand how these different practices vary from one district or region of the United States to another.

Municipal Water Leader: Is this information publicly available?

Martin Doyle: Yes, our dashboards and the database they were built upon are public and can be accessed on the Nicholas Institute website, nicholasinstitute.duke.edu. We collect the data, curate them as much as we can, and then put them online.

Usually, we publish our code as well. Anybody can download the data and the code and do whatever they want with them.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your project called the Internet of Water.

Martin Doyle: Although all kinds of information is available on the internet, it is difficult for people to find out whether the water in their local utility is safe to drink. Even though that information is collected regularly and is intended for public use, the basic architecture of the water data management system in the United States, especially at the municipal level, is archaic. Our overall idea was that if we want to modernize water management, we need to start by modernizing water data. The Internet of Water is as much about behavior and social processes as it is about technology.

We have a couple of people who spend their time engaging with governments at the local, state, and federal levels to get agencies, entities, and utilities to start modernizing their water data management systems. Some states—California, New Mexico, and Oregon, for example—have passed water data modernization laws. These states and relevant agencies are putting resources into it, but more importantly, they are requiring their agencies to manage data in consistent ways.

Municipal Water Leader: In addition to making it possible for the average person to look up water quality data, your datasets would let scientists study those results, correct?

Municipal Water Leader: How does the recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, known as the

34 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | April 2022

Martin Doyle: It was a big surprise to us. The infrastructure law includes the authorization of a pilot project on water data modernization. About $15 million would go to states to invest in the modernization of data. If the pilot program is appropriated, and we think it will be, states that get the money will follow the principles for modernizing water data established by the Internet of Water.

Municipal Water Leader: How does your work at the Nicholas Institute intersect with what is taught at the Nicholas School?

Martin Doyle: Many students these days are interested in the practice and policy side of water, not just in science and engineering. They find it interesting when we share what we’re working on at the Nicholas Institute. We hire students at the institute, and they do an enormous amount of work.

They’re clever and creative, and they contribute new ideas.

It’s a treat for me when, years later, I run into students who worked for me, and they’re working in a professional setting, whether at a water utility, at a consulting firm, or in the federal government.

Municipal Water Leader: What is your vision for the future of the Nicholas Institute, the Water Policy Program, and your field in general?

Martin Doyle: Well, I think the thing that we’re starting to keep an eye on is disasters. Natural disasters are important, as they reshape everything that we do. We might do a lot of planning and have good policy ideas, but if a big disaster hits, everything we’ve been working on might get thrown out the window. The other big thing that my group is starting to focus on is what we’re calling utility disasters—events like the algal bloom in Toledo or the contamination of the water in Flint. These are important because they can affect municipal water systems as much as a natural disaster and require us to make a lot of decisions and changes in a short period of time, and many of these changes become permanent afterward. We need to start thinking of these nonweather disasters on the same scale as we do natural disasters. M

Martin Doyle is the director of the Water Policy Program at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and a professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment. For more about the Nicholas Institute, visit nicholasinstitute.duke.edu. municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NICHOLAS INSTITUTE.

Martin Doyle: Very much so. We want to make the data easily findable, accessible, and interoperable. We’re just trying to get it out there in a modern format. Obviously, scientists are good at working with big, messy datasets, and they often have the technical skills to work with big data.

But other groups need the data to be more approachable and digestible. For instance, citizen science groups have also started to use the data to make sure that regulations are being followed. There is a range of groups that can’t work with water data right now because, in its current format, it’s just too difficult to find the data and make sense of them all.

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Upcoming Events April 6–8 Water Quality Association, Convention and Expo, Orlando, FL April 7–8 The P3 Water Summit, San Diego, CA April 11–14 The California-Nevada Section of the American Water Works Association, Spring Conference 2022, Anaheim, CA April 13 Nebraska Water Resources Association, Water Roundtable, Lincoln, NE April 24–30 National Association of Clean Water Agencies, Water Week, Washington, DC April 25–27 American Water Resources Association, Spring Conference, Tuscaloosa, AL May 3–6 Association of California Water Agencies, Spring Conference and Exhibition, Sacramento, CA May 9–12 American Water Resources Association, Geospatial Water Technology Conference, Austin, TX May 10–12 National Water Resources Association, Federal Water Issues Conference, Washington, DC May 16–18 Global Water Intelligence, Global Water Summit, Madrid, Spain May 17–20 National Association of Clean Water Agencies, 2022 National Pretreatment Workshop and Training, Nashville, TN June 3–6 U.S. Conference of Mayors, 90th Winter Meeting, Reno, NV June 6–7 National Association of Clean Water Agencies, 2022 Strategic Communications: H2O Workshop, Milwaukee, WI June 12–15 American Water Works Association, Annual Convention and Exhibition, San Antonio, TX June 13–16 Nevada Water Resources Association, Well and Water Week, Reno, NV June 15–17 Texas Water Conservation Association, Summer Conference, Round Rock, TX June 20–22 Groundwater Management Districts Association, Summer Meeting, Frisco, CO July 11–13 North Dakota Water Resource Districts Association, Joint Summer Water Meeting, and North Dakota Water Education Foundation, Executive Briefing, Fargo, ND July 21–24 National Association of Counties, Annual Conference and Expo, Adams County, CO July 24–27 National Association of Clean Water Agencies, Utility Leadership Conference, Seattle, WA July 25–27 National Water Resources Association, Western Water Seminar, Fairmont, MT July 28 North Dakota Water Resource Districts Association, Water Day at the North Dakota State Fair, Minot, ND

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