Critical Issues
In North America, the water and wastewater industry has quietly provided the clean water and the wastewater treatment desired by the consuming public-consistently and without fanfare, for decades. More significantly, the water and wastewater industry has accomplished this at a minimum of costs to the individual user. (Low-cost water supplies and wastewater treatment have been considered to be virtually an entitlement or have simply been taken for granted.)
For most-excepting those directly involved in the industry-clean water supply and wastewater treatment have been among the furthest things from the average person's mind. Until now.
Growing public interest and concern for environmental issues have been energized recently by prolonged regional droughts; increased awareness of the hazards of releasing of nutrients into natural water resources; predictions of energy shortages; and increased discussion of global climate change.
All of these factors and others have combined to create the critical issues we face today and, in part, supply at least one of the more obvious solutions.
These critical issues can be summarized as substantial limitations on financial, environmental, energy, and human resources. The operative word is limitations, relative to resources in the foreseeable future.
Current Trends
In past decades, the dollars needed for construction and improvement of water and wastewater treatment facilities have largely been provided from federal budgets. However, the money needed to pay for all aspects of water and wastewater operations, including present and future improvements, will have to come from the end user (financed by State Revolving Funds).
Going forward, the individual end user will ultimately have to pay the full costs associated with the water and wastewater services they receive. (This at a time when much of the existing water and wastewater infrastructure is nearing the end of its useful life and will require large investments just to remain operable.) This significant change in "who is footing the bill"-which has been evolving for several years-is likely to be both dramatic, as well as somewhat traumatic for all industry stakeholders, including users, municipal officials, community leaders, system operators, industry engineers and designers, manufacturers, suppliers, and investors.
Fortunately, the public's increased awareness of environmental issues and burgeoning interest in water and wastewater activities provide the opportunity for education and communication on the real costs of achieving robust environmental goals in a sustainable manner. This "new interest" will help significantly in achieving acceptance by the public of inevitably higher rates for new infrastructure and improved water and wastewater services. (This is the one "obvious" solution.)
Beyond coping with financial and environmental limitations, the factors of energy conservation and the forecast scarcity of human resources-relative to both availability and skills-are destined to shape sweeping changes in the systems, methods, and practices common within the water and wastewater industry.
For example, issues of life-cycle costs are destined to become much more important in the selection of equipment and processes because it provides a more comprehensive basis for decision-making. This could alter the structure of purchasing activities from its current focus on initial price. Operational and Maintenance issues will have to be weighed even more carefully when investments are made in systems and equipment. Outsourcing of entire processes may become very much the norm in situations where such approaches can show definable resource savings. Suppliers to the industry will have to evolve quickly over the next couple of years and provide new types of services to fill the currently predicted "gaps" in water and wastewater facility staffing.
The changes that are coming to the water and wastewater industry-though driven by limitations-are, on the whole, positive in nature and will likely result in more effective and efficient operations long-term.
Though the water and wastewater industry will probably never be regarded as a glamour-industry, its profile within the context of 21st Century living is definitely being lifted. Certainly, the importance of water and wastewater activities-and a truer understanding of the real value of these activities-will be more fully realized by the public at large, with each passing year. For an industry that has been taken for granted for decades, the move into the spotlight is bound to be, at the very least, both challenging and exciting.
Additional Insights
Effective solutions can be expected to vary application-by-application, project-by-project, and customer-by-customer. We no longer live in a one size fits all kind of world; effective solutions have to be specific to the problem.
In line with this thinking, we have invested in an advanced submersible technology facility, located in Thomasville, GA. This facility incorporates comprehensive testing technologies, including a two-story hydraulics test tank that allows optimization of pump and mixer performance under specified conditions and provides confirmation of the efficacy of individual recommendations. This is just one of the ways our team is working to provide the expertise necessary to conserve your valuable resources.
Pumps & Systems, January 2008