Municipal Water Leader May 2021

Volume 8 Issue 5

May 2021

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Peter A. DeFazio on Federal Assistance for Wastewater Infrastructure

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House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Peter A. DeFazio on Federal Assistance for Wastewater Infrastructure

Contents May 2021 Volume 8, Issue 5

5 F orging the Future Through Policy and Innovation

By Kris Polly

18 C raig Milne: How Robots Can Improve Data Collection and Safety

8 House

Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Peter A. DeFazio on Federal Assistance for Wastewater Infrastructure

24 B ryan Eagle of Glanris: Turning Ag Waste Into Sustainable Filtration Media

14 C oachella Valley Water District: Making Water Work for Families, Farmers, and Golfers

28 M elanie McClare: Working Smarter With Wastewater at Swirltex

Coming soon in Municipal Water Leader: June: Storm Water Runoff July/August: Texas's February Storm Do you have a story idea for an upcoming issue? Contact our editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

4 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | May 2021

an American company established in 2009.

STAFF: Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief Joshua Dill, Managing Editor Tyler Young, Writer Stephanie Biddle, Graphic Designer Eliza Moreno, Web Designer Caroline Polly, Production Assistant and Social Media Coordinator Cassandra Leonard, Staff Assistant 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.

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. For address corrections or additions, or if you would prefer to receive Municipal Water Leader in electronic form, please contact us at admin@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. @MuniWaterLeader /MuniWaterLeader

municipalwaterleader.com muniwaterleader

COVER PHOTO:

Congressman Peter A. DeFazio, Chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

Photo courtesy of the Office of Peter A. DeFazio.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF PETER A. DEFAZIO.

34 S ergie Albino of ecoSPEARS: Fighting Environmental Contamination With Advanced Technology

Municipal Water Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for May/June and November/December by

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Forging the Future Through Policy and Innovation

By Kris Polly

T

his month, we have the pleasure of featuring Congressman Peter A. DeFazio, the chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Chair DeFazio tells us about his commitment to federal funding for smarter, safer, greener, and more resilient infrastructure and explains the importance of the Water Quality Protection and Job Creation Act, which he recently reintroduced. I hope you will enjoy our fascinating interview with this key congressional policymaker.

We also look at developments in California’s Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD). David Wilson, CVWD’s engineering manager, and Katie Evans, its director of communications and conservation, update us on the district’s L‑4 pump relocation project and its Oasis in-lieu recharge pipeline project.

We then feature four exciting new technologies.

Craig Milne, the CEO of Copperstone Technologies, tells us about his company’s robust, amphibious environmental monitoring field robots, which have potential pipeline and sewer applications. Bryan Eagle, the CEO and cofounder of Glanris, tells us about how rice hulls—usually treated as waste—can be turned into effective and environmentally

friendly filtration media. Melanie McClare, the CEO of Swirltex, introduces her company’s custom, modular wastewater treatment systems, which use buoyancy-based membrane filtration to more efficiently separate solids and liquids. And Sergie Albino, the cofounder and CEO of ecoSPEARS, tells us about his company’s NASA-developed technology, which uses alcohol-filled spikes and ultraviolet light to remove and destroy harmful and endocrine-disrupting chemicals like polychlorinated biphenyls from natural environments.

Smart policy, forward-thinking infrastructure upgrades, and amazing new technologies are exactly what the municipal water industry needs to move forward and guarantee safe water supplies to all users in the future. I hope you enjoy reading about all three in this month’s Municipal Water Leader. 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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Israel Water Education and Trade Tour October 3–13, 2021 REGISTER NOW!

Please save the date for this tour, sponsored by Municipal Water Leader magazine and operated by Imagine Tours and Travel, LLC. $4,707.00 per attendee (with airfare from Dulles airport) $4,319.00 per attendee (without airfare) All posted prices, services, and destinations are subject to the terms and conditions of the participant agreement.

To view, please visit http://municipalwaterleader.com/israel_tour/.

Municipal Water Leader magazine is published by Water Strategies LLC.

Services included in the package:

• meeting and assistance at Ben Gurion Airport on arrival • transfer to/from Ben Gurion airport • licensed English-speaking guide for all transfers and sightseeing days • luxury air-conditioned coach • entrance fees for all visits and tours • eight nights of hotel accommodation • breakfasts and dinners at hotels and farewell dinner at local restaurant

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House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Peter A. DeFazio on Federal Assistance for Wastewater Infrastructure

Chair DeFazio participates in a February 2020 Members’ Day hearing on the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2020.

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ongressman Peter A. DeFazio has represented Oregon’s 4th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1986. He has served as the chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure since 2019 and before that had been its ranking member since 2015. In this interview, Chair DeFazio tells Municipal Water Leader about his commitment to federal funding for smarter, safer, greener, and more resilient infrastructure and explains the importance of the Water Quality Protection and Job Creation Act, which he recently reintroduced.

Congressman DeFazio: I have been an active member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee since arriving in Congress. In 2018, I was honored to be elected by my colleagues to serve as the chair of the committee after serving as ranking member since 2015. Additionally, during my time on the committee, I have served as chair or ranking member of four of the six subcommittees. As chair

8 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | May 2021

Municipal Water Leader: Would you describe the connection between water infrastructure and the economy?

Congressman DeFazio: Investing in America’s water infrastructure means investing in communities and creating jobs. According to the National Utility Contractors Association, for every $1 billion invested in our water infrastructure, an estimated 28,000 jobs are created or sustained. Unfortunately, the federal government has failed for decades to be a good partner when it comes to addressing state and local wastewater needs. I’m pushing hard to change that. I recently reintroduced the Water Quality Protection and Job Creation Act, which would provide $50 billion over the next 5 years to address America’s crumbling wastewater infrastructure and local water quality challenges, including billions of dollars for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Water State Revolving Fund (SRF) municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF PETER A. DEFAZIO.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about yourself and your role in the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I am committed to moving our country beyond the outdated systems of the Eisenhower era and investing in infrastructure that is smarter, safer, greener, and made to last.

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Chair DeFazio (far left) participates in a May 2019 tour of the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority with Congressman Conor Lamb (far right)—a member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure—and other local officials.

loan program. The Clean Water SRF is the primary source of federal assistance for wastewater infrastructure construction. Through increased federal investment in wastewater infrastructure, we can create tens of thousands of well-paying jobs in the construction and wastewater sectors that will help communities and families across the country.

This couldn’t be more timely or more needed.

Municipal Water Leader: You mentioned that you recently reintroduced the Water Quality Protection and Job Creation Act. Would you expand on why this legislation is important and how it would help address water-related infrastructure needs across the country?

Congressman DeFazio: My bipartisan legislation, which I introduced with Congresswoman Grace F. Napolitano (D-CA), the chair of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, and Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), would not only make badly needed investments in America’s crumbling water infrastructure and help clean up local rivers, it would also create well-paying jobs. Our legislation would specifically authorize $40 billion over 5 years in wastewater infrastructure investments through the Clean Water SRF, which provides low-interest loans, loan subsidies, and grants to communities for wastewater infrastructure. It would also provide an additional $10 billion of additional federal grant assistance to improve water quality and to help communities that need help making expensive upgrades to their wastewater infrastructure. This legislation would reduce the cost of constructing and maintaining that municipalwaterleader.com

infrastructure, accelerate efforts to increase the resiliency of wastewater infrastructure, promote energy efficiency and water efficiency, and reduce the potential long-term operation and maintenance costs of publicly owned treatment works. That is why this bipartisan bill has earned support from a broad coalition, including municipalities, environmental organizations, labor unions, small businesses, and even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Municipal Water Leader: What are the main water and wastewater infrastructure needs for 2021, and what are your priorities for this year?

Congressman DeFazio: As we work to build back better and lay a foundation for our long-term economic recovery from the COVID‑19 pandemic, investing in our water and wastewater systems will play an important part. As for my priorities, a top one for any infrastructure bill must be reauthorizing the Clean Water SRF, something Congress hasn’t done since 1987. This will go a long way in helping to address the backlog of water infrastructure projects and help communities ensure the affordability of wastewater service to households, especially those that may have difficulty making ends meet. In addition, we must also work to ensure that our water infrastructure is as green as possible and is resilient to our changing climate. That is why we also must also look to natural or nature-based approaches to addressing local water quality challenges, something that we did in the Moving Forward Act and the Water Resources Development Act of 2020 and that I plan to do again in a transformative infrastructure bill.

May 2021 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT Municipal Water Leader: What is the discrepancy between current federal funding for water and wastewater infrastructure and the needed level of federal funding?

Congressman DeFazio: Just as we need to invest in our roads and bridges, we need federal investment in water and wastewater infrastructure. According to the most recent EPA Clean Water Needs Survey, states have documented a need for $271 billion in investment over the next 20 years—that’s almost $14 billion needed annually for wastewater infrastructure. And it is likely that this estimate, which is now almost a decade old, significantly underestimates the actual need. Some in Congress say current federal investment levels are fine, but if we continue to fund wastewater infrastructure at the current level of $1.6 billion per year, it would take us almost 170 years just to address existing wastewater infrastructure needs, and that doesn’t include investments to address the challenges posed by climate change, extreme weather events, and the resilience of our water utilities. That is ridiculous, and that is why both my Clean Water SRF reauthorization bill and the Moving Forward Act included $40 billion in federal SRF investment to help address the backlog of clean water needs. It also established minimum allocations for rural and small communities for water infrastructure investment.

I am committed to being a partner for rural and urban communities alike that are working to ensure clean, safe, and reliable water services to their residents.

Municipal Water Leader: What is the best way for the federal government to partner with state and local governments in making infrastructure investments?

Municipal Water Leader: The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee was successful in passing WRDA 2020 as part of the omnibus. How does WRDA 2020 set up additional action on water infrastructure in 2021?

Congressman DeFazio: The Water Resources Development Act—which the Transportation and Infrastructure

10 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | May 2021

Municipal Water Leader: Is the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee addressing issues like the contamination of water supplies by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and endocrine-disrupting chemicals?

Congressman DeFazio: While not all water issues are under my committee’s jurisdiction, the Moving Forward Act would have helped prevent the discharge of industrial chemicals into our wastewater systems and surface waters and put $1 billion in new federal assistance toward helping communities address ongoing contamination of waterways

by PFAS, sometimes known as forever chemicals. Clean, safe, and reliable water is a basic human right, and we should all fight against efforts to weaken protections on that resource.

Municipal Water Leader: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Congressman DeFazio: I’d reiterate what I said at the beginning, which is that I am committed to passing transformational legislation that can finally move our country’s infrastructure out of the 1950s, create millions of well-paying jobs, and tackle some of our biggest challenges such as the climate crisis. To do that, we will need to adopt significant policy changes, and modernizing our water and wastewater infrastructure will be an important part of the solution. By increasing federal investment in these systems, we can create new jobs, ensure clean water, and provide communities with the resources they need to move their water systems into the modern era. M Congressman Peter A. DeFazio represents Oregon’s 4th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives and is the chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

For more about the committee, visit transportation.house.gov.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF PETER A. DEFAZIO.

Congressman DeFazio: States and cities need a strong federal partner to invest in their communities. As local wastewater and water infrastructure needs continue to grow, the federal government must step up to provide that extra support. That’s why I have led the drive in Congress to increase federal funding for the Clean Water SRF loan program. However, not all communities can bear the same financial burden in addressing the backlog of clean water infrastructure needs, which is why my bill requires that a greater portion of federal assistance be distributed as grants—especially to economically disadvantaged communities that struggle to afford necessary clean water upgrades. The quality of your water should not be dependent on your zip code or the economic health of your community.

Committee has developed and passed on a bipartisan and biennial basis since 2014—is critical to all 50 states, to territories, and to tribal communities and includes key provisions to invest in our ports, harbors, and inland waterways; to build more resilient communities; and to ensure that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers carries out projects in an economically and environmentally responsible manner.

WRDA 2020 sets up additional action on water infrastructure by authorizing the study and construction of locally driven projects that have been developed in cooperation and consultation with the Army Corps, and it does so with an eye toward equity and resiliency. As we prepare for WRDA 2022, my committee will be watching closely to ensure that WRDA 2020 is fully implemented as Congress intended.

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Coachella Valley Water District: Making Water Work for Families, Farmers, and Golfers

A reservoir constructed as part of the Oasis project.

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oachella Valley Water District (CVWD), formed in 1918, protects and conserves local water sources across a vast region in Southern California. CVWD has grown into a multifaceted agency that delivers irrigation and domestic water, collects and recycles wastewater, provides regional storm water protection, replenishes the groundwater basin, and promotes water conservation to sustain the region’s population and industries. In this interview, CVWD Engineering Manager David Wilson and Director of Communications and Conservation Katie Evans tell Municipal Water Leader about CVWD’s L-4 pump relocation project, its Oasis in-lieu recharge pipeline projects, and other conservation and sustainability efforts.

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

14 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | May 2021

Katie Evans: I began my communications career as a journalist, but transitioned into public information for Desert Water Agency (DWA) in 2008. At DWA, I had the opportunity to create the public information department, which served to educate constituents about the importance of water resources as well as water use efficiency. I came to CVWD in 2015 as the conservation manager and led a team of 16 water use efficiency experts during California’s historic drought. I was able to return to my communications roots in 2017, first as the interim and then as the permanent director of communications and conservation. In my current role, I oversee water management, outreach and education, and government affairs for the district.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about CVWD. municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF CVWD.

David Wilson: I’ve been involved in the field of engineering for about 18 years. Before arriving at CVWD, I worked for a private engineering consulting firm. I started there near the beginning of the housing boom, when the primary engineering concerns were converting previously developed or vacant land into communities of homes, parks, and commercial corners and building the associated infrastructure. My role involved performing preproject due diligence, developing construction plans and specifications during the planning phase, and shepherding projects through completion of construction. While the work was fulfilling and important, the downturn triggered the need to consider a change. To that end, I joined CVWD in 2011, seeing an opportunity to be a part of something driven by more than just the impulses of the housing market.

I began my career at CVWD as an associate-level engineer, developing capital improvement projects from the

ground up in the realms of irrigation, canals, drainage, and storm water. I also became a certified floodplain manager to facilitate the district’s role in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood Insurance Program and to inform my work reviewing hydrology and hydraulics analyses for proposed projects in special flood hazard areas. As time progressed, my role expanded to capital improvements within our nonpotable water and recycled water distribution system, where I worked to develop approximately 15 connections to local golf courses, providing an alternative source of supply to large irrigation systems that had previously used groundwater. I was then promoted to the position of senior-level engineer, leading our canal division, and eventually returned to storm water when I was promoted to be the engineering manager of our irrigation, canal, and storm water divisions, the position I am in today.

ADVERTISEMENT Katie Evans: CVWD’s service area covers approximately 1,000 square miles. Our domestic water system serves about 300,000 people with about 110,000 active accounts. We estimate that there are about 137,000 acres of agricultural land within CVWD’s service area, and approximately 65,000 of those acres are irrigated, including double cropping. Agriculture is the second-largest contributor to our local economy, right behind tourism.

David Wilson: The district itself has multiple disciplines through which it serves the valley. We provide services for agricultural irrigation and drainage, domestic water, groundwater replenishment, recycled water, regional storm water and flood control, wastewater treatment, and water conservation.

From a storm water perspective, our position in a valley places the community at risk from flash flooding and mountain runoff. The district maintains multiple tributary channels that drain to an approximately 50‑mile-long main channel that bisects the valley and conveys storm flows to the Salton Sea. These facilities receive storm flows and snow melt from the hundreds of square miles of watersheds that surround the valley.

The district operates and maintains the approximately 123‑mile-long Coachella Branch of the All-American Canal and its associated protective works and dikes as well as approximately 485 miles of irrigation distribution pipelines. The canal and distribution system is designed to provide water to users via gravity flow. The distribution system was constructed using a series of baffle stands that are intended to reestablish water pressures throughout the valley to deliver a constant flow to customers.

Municipal Water Leader: Is there a distinction between CVWD’s recycled water and nonpotable water programs?

David Wilson: Recycled water is tertiary-treated effluent from our water reclamation plants. Our nonpotable water is a blend of recycled water and Colorado River water.

The seasonal changes in the population of the Coachella Valley affect the effluent supply. In the summer, when the population is lower, we blend the effluent with Colorado River water to ensure we are able to maintain the necessary levels for the golf courses.

Municipal Water Leader: Does CVWD consider itself primarily agricultural or primarily municipal?

Katie Evans: Neither, and since in fact we provide seven different services, as David described, we consider ourselves a comprehensive water services agency.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your L-4 pump relocation project.

David Wilson: The means for delivering canal water in this area of the valley have shifted over time as urban municipalwaterleader.com

development has replaced agriculture. Where there were once multiple reservoirs and pump stations moving water around, there is now only one pump station and no reservoirs. As part of the urbanization that has taken place in this area, seven golf courses have been constructed. To implement the district’s in-lieu recharge program and to execute the source substitution element of the Coachella Valley Water Management Plan by providing an alternative supply to large groundwater pumpers, the distribution system in this area needed an upgrade in both pipeline and pump station capacity.

Katie Evans: These efforts work toward the big-picture objective of protecting and maintaining our groundwater levels. When we pursue projects such as these, which create opportunities for source substitution, we are contributing to our long-range plans to ensure that we have sufficient sustainable water supplies to support agriculture, golf, and municipal demands as this region continues to grow and develop.

Municipal Water Leader: CVWD is also working on the Oasis in-lieu recharge pipeline. Why is the Oasis pipeline referred to as an in-lieu recharge project?

David Wilson: That refers to the fact that this project accomplishes conjunctive use and recharge goals by providing an alternative source of water for former groundwater pumpers, with the effect that water remains in the aquifer.

This keeps groundwater available for domestic water purposes while simultaneously mitigating subsidence potential.

Municipal Water Leader: So rather than directly recharging the aquifer, it eliminates the need to remove water from it?

Katie Evans: Yes. This is not a typical pipeline project that provides water to new customers who previously did not receive our water. In this instance, all we are really doing is switching customers from one source of water to an alternative source. Doing so protects the groundwater basin and avoids the need to build another recharge facility.

Municipal Water Leader: How large is this pipeline, and what is its delivery capacity?

David Wilson: It is about 18 miles long and is anywhere from 12 to 72 inches in diameter. It is sized to deliver 32,000 acre-feet of water a year. The project also includes four reservoirs and four pump stations. The source of this water is the Coachella Branch of the All-American Canal, which is fed by the Colorado River.

Municipal Water Leader: When was the project first conceived of, when did construction commence, and when is its completion expected?

May 2021 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT David Wilson: The concept was developed many years ago, well before my time, but the project has gone through a couple of different iterations to make it as cost effective as possible. I have been involved with the project on and off since 2015, and the construction contract was awarded in November 2020. The plan anticipates that it will be an 18‑month construction effort.

Municipal Water Leader: What other efforts is CVWD engaged in to address groundwater levels?

David Wilson: CVWD operates three recharge facilities in the Coachella Valley: the Palm Desert Replenishment Facility; the Thomas E. Levy Replenishment Facility; and the Whitewater River Replenishment Facility, which is operated in partnership with DWA. In 2019, we replenished nearly 10,000 acre-feet at the Palm Desert facility, roughly 37,000 acre-feet at the Levy facility, about 126,000 acre-feet at the Whitewater facility.

Municipal Water Leader: What have the outcomes been from these actions in terms of mitigating or reversing groundwater and aquifer decline?

David Wilson: They’ve been very successful. Over the past 50‑plus years, the Coachella Valley has experienced as much as 2½ feet of subsidence. Amazingly, along with increasing water levels, subsidence has been arrested across much of the valley, and some areas have experienced uplift, which is a sign of recovery from prior subsidence. Over the last 10 years, groundwater levels have increased by 2–50 feet over most of the western portion of the valley, where groundwater is replenished by the Whitewater facility. This is a reversal of the previous overdraft. In the eastern valley, groundwater levels have increased by up to 90 feet, and artesian conditions have returned to a large area as a result of the recharge at the Levy facility. We have already seen increases in groundwater levels of about 10 feet near the Palm Desert facility, which began operating in the mid-valley in early 2019.

Katie Evans: Recently, the United States Geological Survey did a report about the Coachella Valley and our ability to reverse overdraft in our basin. It’s pretty interesting and provides a great deal of evidence regarding the success of our efforts. Our recycled water program, which David alluded to earlier, is certainly a contributing factor to this outcome as well.

Municipal Water Leader: Is CVWD trying to reduce its reliance on imported water?

16 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | May 2021

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about CVWD’s conservation efforts, and how its consumers are responding to the initiatives?

Katie Evans: Conservation is a key priority of CVWD, and like districts around the nation, we view conservation as a water supply that is less expensive than many alternatives.

During the drought that struck California, CVWD was extremely proactive in its conservation efforts, and most of those have been maintained since then. We recently completed internal analyses to ensure our compliance with the 2010 state regulatory conservation guidelines, and we are well ahead of our targets.

We approach conservation in a variety of ways. For our municipal customers, conservation opportunities include turf, toilet, and washing machine rebates; educational classes; and public relations campaigns. On the agriculture customer side, we ran a grant-funded flood-drip-conversion program a few years ago, which taught us a great deal. In the wake of that program, we established regular meetings with the agricultural community in which we discuss potential conservation initiatives that may be possible if grant funding is identified.

Similarly, we have a monthly meeting with the golfing industry, and we maintain a golf and water task force, which talks about the golf industry’s water use and the efficiency efforts that will help maintain water supply levels necessary to its operations. It truly is a multifaceted effort, and we are constantly working with multiple industries and consumer groups to ensure water use efficiency across the board. M David Wilson is the engineering manager at Coachella Valley Water District. He can be reached at dwilson@cvwd.org.

Katie Evans is director of communications and conservation at Coachella Valley Water District. She can be reached at kevans@cvwd.org.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF CVWD.

Katie Evans: CVWD’s intent is to maintain a sustainable water supply for the Coachella Valley. That is a multipronged initiative. Of course, anything we can do to lessen our reliance on any one of our resources helps meet the overall plan.

But it is important to note that our district has senior water

rights to the river water that flows to our district. CVWD is one of only two water agencies in the nation that has water rights to both State Water Project water and Colorado River water supplies; our imported water portfolio is diverse in that regard. We are focusing on ensuring our sustainability through source substitutions, prioritizing the protection of groundwater supplies and the reliability of our imported supply. Some of our other priorities include supporting things like conservation, the State Water Project, conveyance facilities, the Sites Reservoir project, and Colorado River drought contingency planning.

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Craig Milne: How Robots Can Improve Data Collection and Safety

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he evolution of robotics is continually opening more places for exploration, research, and productivity. These can include places that would be dangerous for people to interact with in person, but that robots can reach while controlled from a safe distance. Robots can collect accurate scientific or engineering data, repair or modify existing systems, and even install new equipment safely and efficiently. Copperstone Technologies is leading the way in finding more applications for robots in mining, wastewater, and other industries. In this interview, Craig Milne, Copperstone Technologies’ CEO, tells Municipal Water Leader about how robots increase safety while improving data accuracy, the technologies that make the company’s robots unique, and future applications for robotics in the water industry.

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

18 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | May 2021

Copperstone's all-terrain robot can handle rough and inhospitable conditions.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you describe the robot?

Craig Milne: What makes our robot distinctive is that it’s amphibious: it can float in water and drive across the hard ground. There really aren’t a lot of choices when you are looking for an amphibious robot. Our robot can operate anywhere where water and land intersect, including beaches, rivers, canals, utility ditches, ponds, and water storage facilities. The robot has a large pontoon, which allows it to float in water. The pontoon has a helical screw that rotates to serve as a propeller in water or a wheel on hard ground.

It also has four-wheel drive. It works quite effectively in transitional zones that have traditionally been difficult for tracked vehicles and wheeled robots to traverse, such as swamps and snow.

Municipal Water Leader: Does the robot come in different sizes? municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF COPPERSTONE TECHNOLOGIES.

Craig Milne: I’m a scientist by training, with a degree in medical sciences and a degree in finance. I’m a curious person, and I have been involved in lots of different things in my life. For the last 15 years or so, I’ve been involved in a number of technology ventures, a lot of which related to water in one way or another. About 2 years ago, I joined Copperstone. The company was founded by a couple of mechanical engineers from the University of Alberta.

While completing their graduate studies, they helped some Canadian mining companies do measurements called tailings in their waste facilities. Copperstone’s founders realized that simply accessing these facilities posed a challenge; they could do the measurements, but they couldn’t get to the actual place where the measurement had to be done. They came up with the concept of an all-terrain vehicle robot that could crawl into a hazardous location, such as a mining waste facility, to take measurements. That’s how Copperstone got started. They operated for a couple of years building some prototypes, and I joined them in January 2019 with the intention of growing the company into a bigger commercial enterprise. Since then, we’ve focused on building commercial-grade robots and working with mining companies to provide them the information they need. We’ve settled on a business model of robots-asa-service. One of the things we recognized was that not everybody wants to purchase a robot, because it seems like a big investment and a complicated device. It made more sense to employ a business model based on understanding the client’s needs and then either using the robots we have or customizing one as needed. Then we send out a field team that has all the necessary safety training and certifications and collect the data on behalf of the client.

ADVERTISEMENT Craig Milne: Right now, we have two different sizes. One of them is about 4 feet by 4 feet and weighs a couple hundred pounds. The other one is about 12 feet long, around the size of a small car, and weighs almost 2,000 pounds. We’re looking at going in both directions—building smaller units that are better at crawling through restricted spaces like tunnels as well as bigger units that can carry a lot of mass, since for some of the jobs we do, the robot has to carry a lot of heavy equipment.

Municipal Water Leader: How much do the robots cost?

Craig Milne: They are quite expensive to build, especially as they increase in size. That said, our services eliminate the need for our clients to put four or five people and existing equipment in a hazardous location, which is also quite expensive. We typically charge day rates or project fees.

The rates we charge are often cheaper than alternatives that require putting onsite personnel at risk.

Municipal Water Leader: Can the robot be deployed in a river?

Craig Milne: We haven’t done a lot of river testing, but the robots’ maximum speed is just over 1 meter per second. If the current is much faster than that, we wouldn’t be able to hold a position. We are working on a new robot that has a higher top speed.

The robots also do well in long beaches or debrisladen water, which boats don’t do well with. We’ve also successfully driven the robots through vegetation without damaging them or the vegetation; weeds that would normally get caught in a propeller are not typically a problem because of the pontoons we use.

Municipal Water Leader: In addition to day rates and project fees, do you have long-term contracts for this service?

Craig Milne: Yes, that’s where we’d like to end up. A longterm contract would make sense for someone who needs to routinely perform maintenance on or inspections of a hazardous permanent facility. We have an autopilot system on the robot, so it can drive a predetermined course using GPS. Some navigation systems are on board, and the rest is controlled remotely.

It sends all its data and video back to a remote base station so that an operator can see what’s happening. We’re also working on even going one step further than that by allowing the information to be sent to an office that is thousands of miles from the robot. It would be like a Mars exploration robot, beaming data back to headquarters, and able to be controlled and seen from headquarters.

Municipal Water Leader: Could this robot be used in an underground water conveyance pipe or sewage pipe?

Craig Milne: That is of high interest, and we are looking at adjusting our design to fit that type of environment. We have been in touch with a European agency about building a robot that would work like that. There are lots of old sewer systems in Europe, many of which have been through wars or bombing events and have interesting histories. If you have a small-diameter pipe, it’s easy to flush it with water, clean it, and then send a tiny crawler down it. We’re finding opportunities with tunnels that are larger, maybe 10 feet wide. You can’t easily clean a 10‑foot-wide tunnel by flushing it with high-pressure water. You actually have to send people or tiny excavators. There is an advantage to sending a robot into unknown spaces like those with hundreds of years of sewage and bricks. municipalwaterleader.com

Copperstone's robots are large enough to carry multiple sensors and other equipment.

Municipal Water Leader: Tailing sampling is a mining application, correct?

Craig Milne: It is, but in some ways it’s the same as what happens in environmental sampling.

If you need to know what the bed of a lake or a river looks like, we can take a sampler, drop it to the bottom, and pull up some of the mud. We can take water samples at the surface. We can drop water profiling sensors through the column to understand the temperature, turbidity, and salinity through the entire water column.

Municipal Water Leader: Does your company do data analysis as well?

Craig Milne: We collect the data and samples and provide all the reporting, but we don’t do the interpretation. There are environmental and civil engineers who focus on that side of things; we help them by giving them the full picture of the data.

May 2021 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT Municipal Water Leader: What advantages does this system have over conventional methods?

Craig Milne: There are basically two ways of doing this today. The most common method is using people: You might send people out in a boat. There are issues with this approach. Boats can’t traffic in shallow-water areas, and they sometimes get stuck. Putting people in hazardous locations also complicates things. If you have two people in a boat, you also need a safety crew on shore in case there’s a problem. It may take several days of planning to make sure that there are rescue operations, that everyone has life jackets, and that you have the special certifications to be operating on the water. Our system can avoid all of that.

Our people stay safe in a warm pickup truck.

Another advantage is precision. With the robot, everything is GPS controlled. We can do a survey every week for a whole summer and take measurements at the exact same survey points with centimeter-level accuracy.

Our robots also have advantages over small robotic or remote-control boats with sensors, which are a competing option. One reason is that the boats can only carry a limited weight. Our larger robots are big enough to carry about 600 pounds. They’re fairly sizable machines that can carry lots of tools.

Municipal Water Leader: Are the robots battery powered?

Craig Milne: They’re all electrical right now. They have rechargeable batteries, and we keep a spare set on shore. The robots can maintain near-continuous operation. When the batteries get low, the robots come home, we swap the batteries out for new ones, and we send them back out. We can recharge the first set of batteries while the robot is still operating.

Municipal Water Leader: So the robot is smart enough to navigate its way home whenever it is running low on battery?

Craig Milne: Yes; we built in a lot of fail-safes like that.

Even if one of the robots gets out of radio range and loses communication, it will go back home or return to the last place it had communication to find a new signal.

Municipal Water Leader: How long does a battery charge last?

Municipal Water Leader: Is your company active internationally?

Craig Milne: If it weren’t for COVID‑19, we would be. We are global and had to be right from the beginning. There are not a lot of options in northern Canada, where we are based.

There’s definitely a strong mining community, and we work with local mining companies. But we also have international collaborations, including a good partnership in Brazil. We’ve had lots of conversations in Australia, but we haven’t started operations there yet. And of course, the United States is just a stone’s throw away.

Municipal Water Leader: What are your other top issues today?

Craig Milne: Awareness, because we’re fairly new.

People don’t know that our solution exists. A lot of measurements and monitoring happen in and around water all the time. Sometimes it’s as easy as putting on a pair of hip waders and going out with a bucket, but sometimes it’s really complicated. If people know that there is an alternative, I think they will use it. There are a lot of efficiencies to be gained with robotics, and safety is really important, particularly for a lot of big industrial players. We can offer that in a way that has never been offered before.

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

Craig Milne: We look to things like the Mars exploration that’s happening right now for inspiration. It is a complicated project to send a robot to Mars, but NASA did it because it’s actually simpler and safer than sending people, and the robot is capable of doing all sorts of amazing measurements and exploration. That’s what we want to do here on Earth: to send robots into places that are just too dangerous for people and to do it in a way that is more efficient than the alternatives. We can operate in all weather, during any season, 24 hours a day. Imagine the new data we can easily and safely collect and the benefits that can provide users! M Craig Milne is the CEO of Copperstone Technologies. He can be reached at info@copperstonetech.com.

Municipal Water Leader: How do the robots react to adverse weather conditions like rain?

20 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | May 2021

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF COPPERSTONE TECHNOLOGIES.

Craig Milne: Several hours. It depends on what the robot does, weather conditions, and other factors. The robots are as large as they are in part so that they can carry a fairly heavy set of batteries. The more they’re out in the field, the more efficiently our time is being used.

Craig Milne: We do extreme weather tests as much as we can. We’re in northern Canada, so they’ve definitely been cold tested. We’ve operated in thunderstorms during which you can’t put people on the water for safety reasons.

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LNVA Repairs Jones Crossing at the Devers Canal

T

he Lower Neches Valley Authority (LNVA) is one of the 23 River Authorities created by the State of Texas to develop and manage the waters of the State. The site of the potential breach is approximately 21 canal miles downstream from LVNA’s Devers first pump station at the Trinity River. At this particular location, known as Jones Crossing, an aged drainage system was piped under the Devers Canal via three parallel 48-inch reinforced concrete pipes. The canal, in turn, was piped directly under a farm access road also via three parallel 48-inch reinforced concrete pipes.

All three features converged at various angles at the Jones Crossing point.

“We were experiencing problems with the existing reinforced concrete pipe joints separating and allowing

canal water to leak into the ditch,” said Ryan Ard, P.E., LNVA engineering manager. “Over the years, erosion and weathering had deteriorated the original timber headwalls in the drainage ditch. This ongoing erosion exacerbated by heavy rains eventually infiltrated and undermined the headwalls, allowing the banks of the drainage ditch to creep toward the canal. Had we allowed the problem to persist, the canal banks would have ultimately been breached by erosion, thereby allowing canal water to spill into the drainage ditch below.”

The scope of the repair would include excavating and removing the existing drainage ditch and canal crossings. LNVA engineers analyzed several alternative repair designs, but ultimately decided the best option

was to rebuild the crossing in its original configuration. Because the hydraulics of both the canal and the drainage culverts had been performing satisfactorily for many years, they decided to use the same size pipe for the reconstruction. The driving consideration was trying to maximize the depth of the canal while maintaining the existing flow line of the drainage ditch. The installation of the three 160-foot runs in the drainage ditch took four days, while installation of the three 40-foot runs in the canal under the roadway was completed in only one day. Once the new HOBAS pipe was installed, LNVA crews re-graded the drainage ditch slopes and reconstructed the canal banks and rock road back to their pre-existing grades.

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Bryan Eagle of Glanris: Turning Ag Waste into Sustainable Filtration Media

Glanris turns raw rice hulls into water filtration media.

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educing and reusing waste material are important conservation issues for both the water and the food industries.

Bryan Eagle cofounded Glanris to develop a new technology that employs discarded rice hulls to create a filter material that can remove metals and organic material from water systems, all without any plastic or artificial components and with the added benefit of sequestering carbon after its use. In this interview, Mr. Eagle tells Municipal Water Leader how the Glanris technology works, its advantages over other filter materials, and the crucial role it can play in addressing climate change.

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

24 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | May 2021

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF GLANRIS.

Bryan Eagle: I grew up in McLean, Virginia. I went to the University of Virginia for my undergraduate degree and to Columbia University for my MBA. For most of my career, I have been a serial entrepreneur in the telecom space. My family bought a home in McLean when it was still fairly rural in the 1960s. We had a well and a septic tank. When you grow up in an environment without a municipal water supply, you really do have a different relationship with water. Our water came out of the ground, and we realized what a precious

thing it was when it didn’t work.

I moved to Memphis in the late 1980s to help buy a satellite-based telecom company. After selling the company that I was involved with, I started a nonprofit incubator to help early-stage companies get started and grow. That incubator has been in operation for 20 years. We also helped created a $5 million nonprofit evergreen venture fund to help local entrepreneurs.

I got involved with Glanris when an inventor approached me about a technology he had discovered for producing water filtration media. I was interested in water and all things water related, and this technology is at the confluence of a number of planetary macro trends. First, we’re running out of freshwater. We will either need to start reusing the water that we’re using for potable and nonpotable uses or we’ll have to desalinate a lot more water to make it available to our increasing population. McKinsey & Company came out with a study recently that states that by 2030, demand will exceed supply by 40 percent. We’re going to need a lot more cheap, effective, and sustainable water filtration technologies and more water filtration media, like what we’re producing.

Glanris ties into another macro trend because of what our product is made from. Our material is a hybrid water filtration

ADVERTISEMENT media made from rice hulls. It is partially activated carbon, so it has the adsorption removal capabilities of activated carbon, but it also has the dissolved metal removal capabilities of ion exchange resins, and it is completely green and sustainable.

No plastics or harsh chemicals are used to produce it.

We make our media from rice hulls because it’s the number 1 ag waste product in the world. Two hundred eighteen billion pounds of hulls are generated every year in the process of making rice. That amounts to 30 billion cubic feet. In most of the world, those hulls are burned. That burning is a major source of air pollution. Anybody who has ever been to New Delhi or Mumbai in the fall has seen what happens when the rice hulls are burned in the fields. Your eyes water because there’s so much smoke.

exchange tanks, which are the big filtration tanks that you see in industrial applications.

Municipal Water Leader: How do you process the hulls to make your media?

Bryan Eagle: We are initially focusing on the industrial market. Potential clients include any company that uses water to make its product, such as food and beverage companies, and any company that uses water somewhere in its manufacturing process and needs to clean it after it has been used so that it can be reused or discharged. No certifications are required to sell into that market. Our product can be 5–20 percent more effective than the mixed bed process of activated carbon and ion-exchange resins.

We also have faster kinetics, so we can do it in one-third of the time at about one-tenth the cost. Our product is better, faster, and cheaper.

Bryan Eagle: We pyrolyze the hulls, creating active carbon.

We freeze the carbon in its elemental form so that once the hulls are used for filtration and go to a landfill or are used for soil augmentation, the carbon is sequestered for the next 10,000 years. Carbon sequestration is the most effective tool we have today for addressing climate change.

There are really only four technologies that are used in water filtration systems. Activated carbon is used to remove organics, certain chemicals are used for disinfection and flocculation, ion-exchange resin beads are used to remove dissolved metals, and then there’s microfiltration. We produce hybrid media that has the ability to remove organics and dissolved metals.

We make our media by taking rice hulls and cooking them at a high temperature but in the absence of oxygen.

That’s what pyrolyzing is. When you burn something, the carbon elements join with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other substances. When we pyrolyze the hulls, we cook off everything but carbon and silica.

What is left resembles granular activated carbon. We have a patented process that allows us to add an ion-exchange capability to that silica structure, which also gives us the ability to remove dissolved metals.

To dive into a little bit of chemistry, there are two things going on. There’s the attraction of the organics through adsorption, which functions a bit like static electricity pulling things to your clothes. Ion exchange is a kind of bonding that functions a bit like magnets pulling together.

Oppositely charged bonds get attached to the media; that’s how you pull dissolved metals out of the solution. Those two things happen simultaneously on the surface of our media.

Municipal Water Leader: How much pollutant can the media remove from water?

Bryan Eagle: Its capacity is about a quarter pound of metals per cubic foot of media. That’s about a quarter the capacity of ion-exchange resin beads, but ion-exchange resin beads cost 10–50 times what our media costs. Generally, people are comparing total cost on a filtration basis.

Municipal Water Leader: Are your clients primarily industrial, residential, or municipal?

Municipal Water Leader: What do you do with the media at that point? Do you have to put it into a filter?

Bryan Eagle: We just make the media. We then sell it to people who put it into filters or into what are known as municipalwaterleader.com

Water filtration media in Glanris’s research and development lab.

May 2021 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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26 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | May 2021

The overseas market is a completely different world. We’ve already been invited to participate in several innovation projects with water utilities in England, France, India, the Netherlands, and Scotland. We’re doing tests with a number of other overseas government and municipal entities; they’re way ahead of U.S. entities in terms of wanting to be greener and looking at alternative technologies like ours that are part of the circular economy. We have pilots up and running right now in India, including with a municipal water supplier. That work is done through a distributor there. As COVID‑19 restrictions start to lift and people feel freer moving around the world, we’re going to get back on track with conversations about international manufacturing.

Rice is grown everywhere, including in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. We ought to have a facility in every location where rice is grown and where there are major mills, processing hulls so that they don’t get burned and turning them into products that can help filter water. Everywhere that rice is grown, people have water filtration needs. In some of those places, the water is really bad, so it’s a win-win-win.

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

Bryan Eagle: We are an important part of the greening of industrial products. Historically, when somebody shows up with a green product, it’s 10 times as expensive as the alternative. Some people will use it anyway because they want to make a difference, but it’s never going to be universally adopted until it has similar efficacy, it’s cheaper, and it’s everywhere. We have a lot of advantages over the other products on the market today. We’re less expensive than ion-exchange resin beads and about as expensive as activated carbon, but activated carbon doesn’t remove dissolved metals. On a combined basis and on a total-costof-filtration basis, we’re less expensive. Our product is green, and when it goes to the landfill, it sequesters carbon.

Providing greener products for the future without requiring people to change their behavior is key. We have to start to address climate change in ways that don’t require people to make major life changes. Think of the electric car. When the electric car could only get 15 or 20 miles, it wasn’t as interesting. Now you can go 300 miles on a single charge. That makes it a more reasonable alternative. These technological advancements mean that you don’t have to drastically change your behavior in order to address climate change. I see us fitting into that trend going forward. M Bryan Eagle is the CEO of Glanris. He can be reached at bryan@glanris.com.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF GLANRIS.

The residential market is a huge, expanding market.

Everybody’s concerned about lead in their water. In Washington, DC, and Memphis, Tennessee, there are still lead feeder lines. Today, the interior of those are covered with a coating that doesn’t leach lead, but if you change the chemistry or pH of the water, which is what they did in Flint, Michigan, all of a sudden that protective layer goes away. That makes it a very attractive market for us.

A National Safety Foundation (NSF) certification is required in order to get into any residential market, including home, consumer, and municipal water drinking water applications. We’ve gotten through the first half of the NSF 61 process and we’ve gotten our compliance letter, which means that we don’t leach anything toxic into the water and that we do in fact pull the metals out that we claim. To get full NSF certification and to be able to put a logo reflecting that on our products, we need to do an audit of our manufacturing processes to make sure that we are manufacturing the media safely and can repeatedly manufacture it going forward.

We have a 60,000‑square-foot manufacturing facility, and we’ve just gotten our manufacturing line up and running. Over the next 3–4 months, we’ll be doing that audit. Once we complete our NSF certification, we’re going to be aggressively going after whole-home and pitcherbased systems. About 60 percent of a filter like a Brita filter consists of ion-exchange resin beads. They are efficient and do a great job of pulling metals out of the water, but they aren’t very green. They end up in water, and fish eat them.

We can replace that filter media with something that is completely green and doesn’t require harsh chemicals to produce. Once our media has been used and is sent to the landfill, it sequesters carbon, helping to address climate change. We think residential customers will love that, because they’re looking for green, sustainable applications.

Finally, there is the municipal market. The water industry has traditionally been slow to innovate, although that has started to change in the last couple of years. The situation in Flint, Michigan, has made us look more carefully at everything we put into any municipal system, because the consequences of changing inputs can be severe. We’re slow to innovate in the municipal sector, because when something goes wrong, people can get sick and potentially die. Obviously, we want to take the time to do things properly. Typically, municipal customers want to see any new technology operating at scale, in situ, for 3–5 years before they adopt it. For us as a new company, a 3- to 5‑year sales cycle is a long time. We want to address that, because we think we have tools that can help save municipalities a lot of money and be greener, but we also recognize that they’re hesitant about adopting some of these technologies. We are looking for municipalities that may be interested in our technology, particularly as the new Biden administration starts to address infrastructure-related issues. The need for green products to address water filtration needs should be a higher priority than it has been historically.

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Melanie McClare: Working Smarter With Wastewater at Swirltex

By injecting gas into the influent stream, Swirltex increases the efficiency of tubular membranes.

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nnovation can take many forms, and these can include making existing technology work better and more efficiently.

Swirltex is committed to doing exactly that. The company produces custom, modular wastewater treatment systems that use buoyancy-based membrane filtration to more efficiently separate solids and liquids, producing higher-quality effluent and better production rates while requiring less energy. Swirltex’s technology is designed to augment existing wastewater infrastructure, eliminating the need for expensive capital upgrades. In this interview, Swirltex CEO Melanie McClare tells Municipal Water Leader about how Swirltex is driving innovation across the wastewater management sector.

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

28 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | May 2021

Municipal Water Leader: Tell us about Swirltex as a company.

Melanie McClare: We’re a team of nine headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada; we have a few people in Houston, Texas, as well. We serve both industrial and municipal customers and target wastewater reuse. We currently operate in Canada and the United States. We’re focusing on growing into the South American and Asia-Pacific markets over the next 2 years. municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SWIRLTEX

Melanie McClare: I have a chemical engineering background. Right out of school, I bounced around the world to countries in Europe and West Africa, mainly in the industrial sector. I landed in the water industry in 2008, when I started working for a fast-growing company called FilterBoxx that serviced customers through a fully containerized modular approach to solving water and wastewater problems. Most of the sales happened in Canada.

During my 9 years at FilterBoxx, I started working on my MBA. One of the programs that was part of the MBA was an accelerator for deep science–based technology companies that needed business help. That’s how I met the founder of Swirltex, Peter Christou. He had invented this wastewater technology in his garage and had had the opportunity to test it in Antarctica for the European Space Agency. I thought that was a really interesting start to his journey. I was fascinated by the technology, and he needed some help on the business side getting the company going and raising capital. I took the leap and joined Peter in 2018. Since then, we’ve grown the company, and we are now servicing three different vertical markets. We have some amazing customers, and it’s been an awesome 3 years.

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A Swirltex installation.

Municipal Water Leader: What was the problem that you aimed to solve with your new technology?

Melanie McClare: The original problem was membrane fouling. That is a technical problem that means that you can’t always use membranes on difficult wastewater streams.

Our solution allows membranes to operate on tougher wastewater streams than they have been able to in the past.

Our business model also responds to the fact that some customers only need their infrastructure polished or upgraded temporarily or seasonally. We offer a pay-forperformance business model according to which we bring a modular asset to the customer’s facility where and when they need it. That means that they don’t have to invest in a capital infrastructure upgrade to their system. So another problem we are solving is allowing this slow-moving, riskaverse sector to pay for performance and derisk projects for a fraction of the cost of capital upgrades.

Municipal Water Leader: How does your technology work?

Melanie McClare: We use fluid mechanics to make membranes work better. What we do is simple. We inject a gas into the influent stream at a specific volume, bubble size, and flow rate. We then spin the multiphase wastewater through a tubular membrane. The net effect of spinning the water through the tubular membrane is that you get more for less. You can use fewer membranes to achieve the same treated water flow rate, which means that your membranes are performing better and you’re also using significantly less energy per gallon. That is really important in this space, especially for the trickier wastewater streams, high solids municipalwaterleader.com

loading, or oily streams. Energy is becoming a bigger factor in decisionmaking. We don’t alter the membrane material itself; we play with the fluid mechanics to make existing membranes work better.

Municipal Water Leader: Where does your technology fit in in process terms?

Melanie McClare: Our technology is a polishing step. Our ideal customers are those who have plants and a pinch point within their processes where we can augment their existing infrastructure with our compact membrane system. We are a filtration step, which is a great fit for augmenting existing infrastructure. A side benefit is the gas that we inject, which can augment the biological treatment process at many of our customer sites.

Municipal Water Leader: What size and length are the tubular membranes your system uses?

Melanie McClare: The geometry of the membrane we select will depend on the wastewater. Each tubular membrane module is composed of a bundle of tubes, say a 10‑inch head with 600 tubes in a bundle. We buy off-the-shelf membranes rather than creating them ourselves. We buy tried-and-true, 40‑year-old technology and make it work better.

Municipal Water Leader: What are the membranes typically made of?

Melanie McClare: We mainly use a polymeric membrane.

The component that we typically operate with is May 2021 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT polyvinylidene difluoride. For particularly high temperature applications, we use other types.

Municipal Water Leader: What is the most energy-intensive element of this process?

Melanie McClare: The pumping. The way that we help customers save energy is by optimizing fluid characteristics within the tube. Basically, we use the wasted space in the tube to benefit the customer by channeling gas and solids toward the center of the tube, away from the membrane surface. That means you can buy much smaller pumps to achieve the same flow rate of treated water.

Municipal Water Leader: What happens to the effluent streams after they go through the tubular membrane?

Melanie McClare: We operate cross-flow filtration, which means that the clean water is squeezed through the membrane and the waste stream continues on through the tube. The waste stream is hyperoxygenated. We return it to the biological pretreatment tank in the case of a municipal application or to the pond in the case of a municipal or industrial pond application. Then, we continually recirculate it back through the membrane system.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us more about how your solution works with pond applications?

current customers are treating the water all the way to the potable level; they’re using it for industrial reuse purposes or in the municipal setting for irrigation and agriculture.

Municipal Water Leader: You alluded earlier to your colleague’s work with the European Space Agency. Is the agency interested in reusing water in space?

Melanie McClare: Yes. For nonearth applications, like the ones we tested in Antarctica, every single drop needs to be recycled.

Municipal Water Leader: Does your product have to be configured differently for industrial and municipal customers?

Melanie McClare: The short answer is no on the membrane side. The way that we design our Swirltex ultrafiltration packaged systems is transferable across multiple verticals.

Often, our customers want us to take on pretreatment and provide a full solution, and in certain industrial and municipal segments, the pretreatment for the membrane system will change. While pretreatment can vary from customer to customer, the actual Swirltex piece is the same.

Municipal Water Leader: What is the benefit of your customized, modular product and business model?

Melanie McClare: Municipal lagoons and ponds are commonly used to manage wastewater in areas like North Dakota. These ponds are expensive to upgrade. Lagoon operators and smaller municipalities that have issues meeting regulatory criteria can benefit from our modular infrastructure.

Melanie McClare: The more customers we talk to, the more we recognize the importance of decentralizing wastewater infrastructure. Servicing customers in a unique way is becoming more mainstream. The traditional model of municipal wastewater infrastructure sales is changing, and we’re part of that change. Now more than ever, customers can be creative with their solutions because of the flexible offerings of companies like ours.

Municipal Water Leader: What do your clients do with the purified water?

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

Melanie McClare: All our customers to date have been reusing this water. It’s ultrafiltered, which means that even very small particles, smaller than bacteria, have been removed. Customers can use that ultrafiltered permeate or effluent stream within their processes or to offset water use for things like irrigation.

Melanie McClare: Our broad vision is net zero wasted water.

We are helping customers and facility owners augment what they have already invested in. We’re not encouraging them to replace old equipment; we’re helping augment what they already have. We allow these facility owners to make smart decisions that benefit their stakeholders faster at a lower cost. Our vision is to help customers get creative and not feel pigeonholed in the traditional wastewater business model. M

Municipal Water Leader: Could this water be used immediately for potable purposes, or does it require further treatment?

30 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | May 2021

Melanie McClare is the CEO of Swirltex.

She can be reached at mmcclare@swirltex.com.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF SWIRLTEX.

Melanie McClare: Technically speaking, ultrafiltration can get the water clean enough that, after it is disinfected, it could be used as potable water. Whether that is allowed depends on regulations. It is not very common in North America, although there are states and cities, like San Francisco, that are working on potable reuse applications. None of our

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Sergie Albino of ecoSPEARS: Fighting Environmental Contamination With Advanced Technology Sergie Albino: Ian Doromal, Dr. Phil Maloney, and I cofounded ecoSPEARS in 2017. We focus on clean tech, and we’ve obtained exclusive licenses from the NASA Kennedy Space Center for one of its environmental cleanup technologies, the Sorbent Polymer Extraction and Remediation System (SPEARS). We have also been building new technology, including the UV Cube water treatment system that we are now rolling out in the Spokane River Valley. We are a venture-backed company and have raised $3.2 million to date.

We started with a seed round of $2.1 million or $2.2 million and recently closed our safe round for another $1.1 million.

We have about 10 full-time employees and 5 part timers in Altamonte Springs, Florida. Our work takes us to California, Hawaii, and Washington State, and we have upcoming deployments in Guam; Sweden; and Washington, DC. Municipal Water Leader: How did you discover the technology for ecoSPEARS?

A SPEARS system being deployed in the port of San Diego.

S

ergie Albino’s career has truly gone to the moon and back.

After helping NASA with its effort to search for water on the moon, he wanted to find ways to improve the water on Earth. With that in mind, he started ecoSPEARS, a company that has developed technologies to clean up environmental contamination. These include the use of ultraviolet (UV) technology to clean contaminated water and alcohol and absorbing spikes to treat soil and sediments. In this interview, Sergie Albino tells Municipal Water Leader about ecoSPEARS’ cost-effective treatment solutions and the importance of a holistic approach to environmental protection.

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

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about ecoSPEARS.

34 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | May 2021

Municipal Water Leader: What is the problem that ecoSPEARS seeks to solve?

Sergie Albino: Once chemical contamination gets into the environment—into groundwater, soil, and sediment—it is a daunting task to clean it up. There’s a whole slew of different types of chemical contamination, caused by both legacy and emerging chemicals. We focus primarily on contamination by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). PCBs were invented in 1929 and were used in transformers in the electrical utility market, painting supplies, caulking for windowsills and doors, and in the maritime industry. They were banned by the municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF ECOSPEARS.

Sergie Albino: I am the cofounder of ecoSPEARS, a clean tech innovation company that is building technologies to help our environment. I went to school at the University of Central Florida and got an MBA at Rollins College. I started out as an aerospace engineer. I did a lot of work with the U.S. Department of Defense and eventually at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. I met the other cofounder of ecoSPEARS, Dr. Phil Maloney, during our work for NASA on a lunar rover program to search for water on the moon.

Sergie Albino: I worked as a subcontractor of NASA from 2007 to 2012, and around 2010–2011, I finished my MBA program at Rollins. I took a class called Global Sustainability Program that was particularly enticing because it included a 2‑week trip to Costa Rica. Being involved in the immersion program in Costa Rica and seeing sustainability being built from scratch inspired me. I already did engineering consulting on the side, but at that point I started wanting to address a need in the world. That eventually led to me to reach back out to Rollins and to become more involved with the school to pay it forward. I learned that NASA had approached Rollins about the NASA scholar distinction program, which was intended to match NASA technology with one or more MBA teams and spark entrepreneurship and green ventures in central Florida.

In our third year, the SPEARS technology came about, and I recognized the names of Dr. Maloney, Dr. Jackie Quinn, and Dr. Robert Devor and wanted to reconnect with my old buddies. Long story short, here we are 4 years later.

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A close look at the SPEARS system’s alcohol-filled spikes.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 after it was discovered that they contain carcinogens and have a lot of bad effects on health and wildlife. In 1981, the manufacture and use of PCBs was banned globally. Some users were grandfathered in, but if their operations leak PCBs into the environment, they are responsible for the cleanup.

Our awareness of new contamination continues to grow, including contamination by dioxin and by pharmaceuticals. This awareness has been increased by films such as Dark Waters or the documentary The Devil We Know. The market for contamination mitigation continues to grow as we realize that chemicals we thought were great for our livelihoods are actually bad.

Once that contamination is in the environment, the only way to eliminate it that is recognized by the EPA is to dig it up and send it to a landfill, where it can be stored forever. The environmental liability doesn’t leave the balance sheet of the client. If the client wants to eliminate the contamination completely, they burn it in the incinerator. It is a catch-22. You’re sending something far away and then burning it, which costs a lot and creates greenhouse gas, which is another pollutant.

There was no good way of eliminating that contamination until we came around and looked at the issue from a sustainability perspective. How do we properly eliminate these contaminants without having to incinerate them or transport them across the country?

Municipal Water Leader: How do you capture that chemical contamination?

Sergie Albino: It depends on the way the contamination is set in the environment. It could be in groundwater, soil, or sediments. The hardest of those are sediments, which are a dynamic environment. For sediments in particular, we use our namesake technology, SPEARS. It consists of green plastic spikes filled with alcohol that we press into the municipalwaterleader.com

sediments. The contamination is absorbed from the pore water into the plastic spikes and eventually dissolves into the alcohol. They basically absorb contamination like a sponge.

When the contamination is below cleanup levels, we remove the spikes and destroy the contamination on site using a UV technology. The spikes and the alcohol are then reused for more cleanup. It’s a sustainable and circular approach.

Municipal Water Leader: Can your technology be scaled for larger sites?

Sergie Albino: Our vision for larger programs is to automate the entire process using a gantry system. We will have a crane system similar to the system that moves a camera around the stadium during a professional football game. We will use automation, machine learning, and Internet-of-things technology to move around and pick larger maps—about 1 square meter in size—and then automate the deployment process and eventually the sampling and extraction process.

The technology can also be deployed using boats with a Babbitt arm or an A-frame system in the back; that’s what we would call a manual deployment.

Municipal Water Leader: So in a water application, the devices are dropped into the water by boat?

Sergie Albino: That is more for sediment applications; they have to go into the sand. It’s a longer process because the contamination is absorbed and then fused into the plastic. The most ideal sites for that are sites like the Port of San Diego, where there is California eelgrass, which is a state-regulated and -protected sensitive wetland barrier, or vernal pools in New York.

We’re really excited about a new technology that we have developed with our partners at Violet Defense. The CEO of Violet Defense, Terrance Berland, and I have May 2021 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

| 35

ADVERTISEMENT collaborated several times in the past. Terrance is also the lead investor in ecoSPEARS. Violet Defense is also based in central Florida. Terrance and Violet Defense have a couple of patents on a UV transmissive lens and a vortex design reactor that allows for better dosing of UV-C in aqueous environments, or water. This allows us to use UV lamps without a protective quartz sleeve, which typically degrades over time. By leveraging that intellectual property, I was able to build a pump-and-treat system called the UV Cube. We pump water into our reactor and dose it with UV, and clean water comes out. It will probably include some byproducts of destroying PCB that we will then filter out using carbon filtration. We’re under contract with Kaiser Aluminum to develop a 50‑gallon-per-minute system that we will deliver in May to treat the PCB plume on its site in Washington State.

Municipal Water Leader: Is there a situation where the SPEARS are used in water?

Sergie Albino: The SPEARS are more intended to treat pore water in sediment. The SPEARS would probably work in stagnant water, but it takes longer for them to absorb contamination from water. With UV, we can just hit it and it’s done.

Municipal Water Leader: What is the market for your technology?

Sergie Albino: The first market that we typically address is made up of manufacturers and utilities. Another market involves state regulators. When a company shuts down a site and files for chapter 11, that site becomes what’s called an orphaned site, and the state now owns it. Now it’s up to the state to clean it up, often with limited funding or resources. What’s nice about working with the state is that it is simultaneously the client, the regulator, and possibly a good friend in the industry.

Municipal Water Leader: Are there municipal water systems that are currently sourcing their water from some of the areas you are working on?

36 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | May 2021

Municipal Water Leader: What other top issues affect your business?

Sergie Albino: I think the water sector is starting to understand that we have not really priced water as a precious resource. If you do not value something, you do not price it the right way and you abuse it. It’s something that you take for granted until it stops working. If we value water the right way, it creates value for those municipal industries, gets them better funded, and gets them moving faster to adopt better technologies to address contamination. Instead of waiting for regulation to come out and then working to catch up to it, the industry needs to work ahead of regulation.

The industry needs to be much more proactive—I’m not just talking about municipalities, I’m talking about everybody. This is why, even in a startup, I’ve incentivized my team to go out there and make friends. We truly do want to help, and we want to show that even a small organization can create a wave of difference.

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

Sergie Albino: One of the pillars we built ecoSPEARS on is education and outreach. We look 10 years ahead, forecast what the company could be, and build it to be that. The kids who are in second and third grade now are likely to be my next sets of talent. Educational outreach by the industry needs to be part of the bigger vision. We need to start inspiring our youth to be part of the water industry, whether as a marketing person, as a salesperson, an engineer, or a geologist. Growing up Filipino, we have three choices: lawyer, doctor, or engineer. I want my kids to understand that if they have a passion for entrepreneurship, they don’t have to peg themselves as an engineer, a lawyer, or a geologist. There is a greater mission, and in that greater mission, you will find your path and your North Star. M Sergie Albino is the CEO of ecoSPEARS. He can be reached at info@ecospears.com.

For more about ecoSPEARS, visit www.ecospears.com.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF ECOSPEARS.

Sergie Albino: Yes. Municipal water suppliers typically process water that comes from everyone’s drains, which can potentially contain PCBs, depending on the age of the pipes, the local industries, and how their systems have been handled. There are also other contaminants of emerging concern, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are in coated pans, camping gear, and Scotchguard. Every single time we wash those Teflon pans, traces of PFAS go down the drain and into municipal systems. That’s a really big issue that’s coming into the municipal market. Another alarming issue for which the regulations aren’t there quite yet is contamination from pharmaceuticals, including heart medications, chemotherapy

medications, and birth control pills. The issue isn't the pills themselves, but the remnants that go down the drain after you ingest them and urinate them out. Those substances now need to be processed by municipal water suppliers.

Municipal water is an industry that changes slowly. That is partly because it is made up of governmental entities that make a lot of their decisions cautiously. Because they’re slow to adopt new and emerging technologies like ours, we sometimes bypass them as clients; we’ll never make it as a startup if we rely on them. We are selective about the municipal organizations we partner with for that reason.

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Upcoming Events May 4–7 Texas Ground Water Association, Annual Convention and Trade Show, San Marcos, TX May 5 Nebraska Water Center, Water Seminar Series: Tributaries: Race, Justice and the Environment (virtual) May 12 Nebraska Water Resources Association, Water Roundtable Series (virtual) May 12–13 Association of California Water Agencies, Spring Conference and Exhibition (virtual) May 17–19 Utah Water Users Association, Annual Workshop, St. George, UT May 17–21 National Association of Clean Water Agencies, National Pretreatment Virtual Event May 19–21 Multi-State Salinity Coalition, Annual Salinity Summit, Las Vegas, NV June 7–8 Nebraska Natural Resources Districts, Papio Basin Tour, Omaha, NE June 7–11 American Society of Civil Engineers, World Environmental & Water Resources Congress (virtual) June 13–16 American Water Works Association, ACE21, San Diego, CA June 14–15 National Association of Clean Water Agencies, Strategic Communications: H2O Virtual Event June 14–17 Nevada Water Resources Association, Well and Water Week, Reno, NV June 16–18 Texas Water Conservation Association, Summer Conference, Horseshoe Bay, TX June 19–22 U.S. Conference of Mayors, Annual Meeting (virtual) June 22–23 National Ground Water Association, Fate of PFAS: From Groundwater to Tap Water (virtual) July 9–12 National Association of Counties, Annual Conference and Expo, Prince George’s County, MD, and virtual July 12–13 North Dakota Water Resource Districts Association, Summer Meeting and North Dakota Water Education Foundation Executive Briefing, Dickinson, ND July 13–15 North Dakota Water Users Association, Summer Meeting, Grand Forks, ND July 14 North Dakota Rural Water Systems Association, Annual Meeting and Summer Leadership Retreat, Medora, ND July 14–16 Hydrovision International, Spokane, WA August 1–4 International Water Association, 10th IWA Membrane Technology Conference and Exhibition for Water and Wastewater Treatment and Reuse, St. Louis, MO August 3–5 National Conference of State Legislatures, Legislative Policy Base Camp (virtual) CANCELED: August 9–11 8th International Conference on Flood Management, Iowa City, IA August 10–12 National Water Resources Association, Western Water Tour of the Columbia Basin, Portland, OR August 24–26 Colorado Water Congress, Summer Conference, Steamboat Springs, CO September 13–16 WaterPro Conference, Milwaukee, WI September 26–28 Nebraska Natural Resources Districts, Annual Conference, Kearney, NE

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