On this episode of The Efficiency Point from Modern Pumping Today magazine, we get updates on the California wildfires and what they could mean for water availability in the years ahead. Incoming Water Environment Federation president, Dr. Lynn Broaddus, shares her insights on building a sustainable water future. Plus, J. and Richard talk turkey (and ham) before Thanksgiving.
LINKS:
MPT magazine: http://mptmag.com
MPT on Twitter: https://twitter.com/modpumpmag
Dr. Lynn Broaddus: https://twitter.com/lynnbroaddus
Broadview Collaborative: https://broadviewcollaborative.com
Water Environment Federation: https://wef.org
TPS2019 Post-event Profile: http://tps.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/10/FINAL-TPS-2019-Post-Event-Infographic-61988_web.pdf
Wildfires and water supplies: https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/wildfires-how-do-they-affect-our-water-supplies
For inquiries regarding the PSAP Prep Course and pricing, contact the Hydraulic Institute’s Peter Gaydon at pgaydon@pumps.org or call 862-242-5679.
On this episode of The Efficiency Point from Modern Pumping Today magazine, we get updates on the California wildfires and what they could mean for water availability in the years ahead. Incoming Water Environment Federation president, Dr. Lynn Broaddus, shares her insights on building a sustainable water future. Plus, J. and Richard talk turkey (and ham) before Thanksgiving.
LINKS:
MPT magazine: http://mptmag.com
MPT on Twitter: https://twitter.com/modpumpmag
Dr. Lynn Broaddus: https://twitter.com/lynnbroaddus
Broadview Collaborative: https://broadviewcollaborative.com
Water Environment Federation: https://wef.org
TPS2019 Post-event Profile: http://tps.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/10/FINAL-TPS-2019-Post-Event-Infographic-61988_web.pdf
Wildfires and water supplies: https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/wildfires-how-do-they-affect-our-water-supplies
For inquiries regarding the PSAP Prep Course and pricing, contact the Hydraulic Institute’s Peter Gaydon at pgaydon@pumps.org or call 862-242-5679.
[inaudible].
Speaker 2:This is the efficiency point, a podcast from modern pumping today magazine. I'm your host, NPT editor, Jay Campbell, along with our producer Richard council. You can find us online@nptmag.com and on any of your favorite podcast apps. While you're there, please rate, review and subscribe. It really does help more listeners find the show. On this episode we speak with Dr. Lynn Braudus, the founder of Broadview collaborative and the incoming president of the water environment Federation. She's dedicated her career to building a sustainable water future and I think you'll enjoy our discussion. We also preview the November issue of MPT, but first some headlines as you might expect. Our top story on this episode is the California wildfires, a California seal expense experiencing massive wildfires that have displaced thousands of people go into the associate press. The Getty fire and the Kincaid fire have evacuated more than 140,000 people. As of this recording, the national weather service estimates that 21 million Californians are in extreme fire danger of California's 58 counties. 43 are experiencing near historic wind events with winds up to 80 miles an hour in Southern California. The fires so far I've consumed over 650 acres and has only 15% contained. Richard, have you, have you been able to see any of the California welfare coverage on the news this past week? Yeah, it's a, it's pretty bad. It's uh, it just seems like they can't catch a break, especially with all the, the new winds and the new lines coming down. It's going to starting new fires and it just a, seems like they're having a lot of trouble, so hopefully they can get it under control soon. Yeah. These wildfires are becoming, uh, a, well, they're becoming annual events in California and uh, they just seem to be getting larger and larger. Yeah, that's right. The wildfires, as you probably have been watching on the news, uh, are on the rise due to climate conditions in California, but also outdated infrastructure. And this is probably something of direct interest to our listeners. California is electrical utility, Pacific gas and electric, also known as PGNE has come under intense scrutiny during this latest round of fires. It's a down power lines have been cited as a major contribution to the wildfires. Uh, the company has initiated statewide rolling blackouts trying to stave off further ignitions, uh, due to failed lines and uh, the fund that it set up, it uh, due to a class action suit for the 2017 and 2018 wildfires has been reduced somewhat due to PG and E declaring bankruptcy protection recently according to the ESG at the us geological survey, wildfires come a compromise water quality both during active burning and for months and years after the fire has been contained. Uh, stay tuned later in the show when we hear from West president elect, Lynn brought us on pathways to a sustainable water future or some of those concerns will be addressed and more positive news. If you attended 2019 turbo machinery and pumps symposia in Houston this fall and wondered who you saw there. I have some good news for you. Texas a and M's turbo lab has released the TPS 2019 post event profile with a breakdown of attendees and industries that were at the show. And according to a Texas a and M over 4,800 verified attendees came to this year's event with 51 countries represented as you'd likely expect. The top country in attendance by population was of course America with the 4,300. Uh, but we had attendees coming as far away as a Uganda, New Zealand and a Australia. So that's, that's a long trip. Um, Richard, can you imagine taking the flight from Australia to Houston, Texas?
Speaker 3:Well, I'll tell you the, uh, the flight I took to Greece was, uh, as a solid 10 hours. So, and I don't tell you what that, uh, that was not a fun plane ride. So, and I could, I could only imagine how they feel, uh, going all the way from the bottom side of the world. So
Speaker 2:on now, now, what pop conference did you attend in Greece? Richard?
Speaker 3:It's a, it had everything to do with my, uh, anniversary. So we kind of, uh, we wanted to keep it pretty settled, but uh, you know, it was a, it was a fun time.
Speaker 2:See, I thought, I thought people only traveled because they wanted to attend a educational pump events. Well of course. And that's why I was disappointed. Yeah. Yeah. Well that's okay. Keep your chin up Richard because uh, Mark your calendar for a September 15th and 17th of 2020 because that's when next year's TPS event is scheduled. The short courses will begin on September 14th. If you're listening to this and want more information about how to register to attend next year's turbo machinery and pumps, symposia, uh, information can be found at Texas a and M's a turbo lab website. tps.tamu.edu. That's TPS dot T a M U that EDU. Our next news item would be of interest for our listeners in the Pacific Northwest. The hydraulic Institute through its pump systems matter program is offering a pump systems assessment professional certification prep course on November 12th through 14th in Seattle, a pup systems assessment professional or piece app certification provides third party validation for an individual's proficiency. And pump fundamentals, pump system optimization and implementation of pump system assets or there was wanting to become[inaudible] certified. This two and a half day course will better prepare you to take the challenging piece app certification exam and there's also an opportunity to sit for the peace app exam after the course is completed for an additional fee. Hydraulic Institute members and standard partners will receive a 25% discount on both the prep course and the subsequent exam for inquiries regarding the piece that prep course and pricing contact the hydraulic institutes, Peter gaden@pgaydonatpumps.org or call(862) 242-5679(862) 242-5679 and we'll include that information in the show description.[inaudible]
Speaker 4:Dr. Lynn broadest is the founder of the broad view collaborative and organization focused on sustainable and reliable water systems and services with a particular interest in water utilities, resource recovery, distributed infrastructure, social equity and collaborative processes. She's also a board member and president elect of the water environment Federation and we're pleased to have her as our guests today. How are you doing Glen?
Speaker 5:I'm great. And it's wonderful to talk with you again.
Speaker 4:Lynn, how did you get involved in, uh, water sustainability and resource recovery?
Speaker 5:Oh gosh. I mean, I, I think it kinda goes back to the basic roots of who I am as a person. I certainly grew up, um, I, you know, as a girl scout and among a family of gardeners and things like that that had me outside and, and, um, uh, loving nature and growing up, you know, cutting my teeth on the first earth day back in 1970. All those things are sort of part of my DNA. And then in college I became very interested in, um, what today we might call kind of closed loop systems, but, uh, we didn't, I don't think we use the term back then. Uh, and then, yeah, that kind of carried through my, my career in a couple of different ways. But, um, I've really kind of landed on water very accidentally. W my family had moved to, to, uh, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2000 and the job that I had, I enjoyed with the nature Conservancy, but I eventually felt like I needed to find something more local, uh, so that I could become part of that Milwaukee community. And rather than just being a, you know, a virtual employees from, um, the back at the home office. And, uh, and what happened was I became the executive director of Milwaukee river keeper. And I immediately felt a connection once I, um, it was almost like I'm having a new child. I thought, Oh my gosh, what is this river? What is this organization that I need to get to know? And once I dove in, I just felt such a connection because, um, not just because it's water for water sake, but because of the way that us laws work, water belongs to the people. It's a very, um, it's, it's democracy with a small D and being able to be the voice of people thinking about what they wanted for their water and how they could connect to it and how they could protect it and restore it resonated with me in a way that I knew I had come home. And that was kind of the way I got started. And um, uh, the seems like a long time ago now.
Speaker 4:Alright. That's a great way to look at it. And it also kind of touches on one of the challenges of talking about the water crisis today. A lot of people don't really understand what we mean when we say we have a water crisis or a potential water shortage because they don't think of water as a nonrenewable resource like oil or gas.[inaudible]
Speaker 5:[inaudible] you know, it's interesting you say that cause I was just recently on a panel with some people from the power and renewable energy sector and they were talking about a lot of that, that changes and especially legal and regulatory matters as well as kind of investment issues in those sectors. And it was so different than in the water sector in part because we forget that. I think a lot of people forget that water isn't just a commodity that we, you know, use to flush our toilets and quench our thirst and, um, uh, uh, grow our plants. We use it in so many ways. Water's used for transportation, water's used for cityscapes and landscapes, waters used for wildlife. And, um, uh, we just, we have to think about it in a whole different way. And when we use it for one thing, depending on how we, how we treat it, we can have really negative consequences for other aspects of our environment and our communities. Um, uh, so, um, I remember one time a long time ago, someone, one of my friends in grad school was running her tap and the kitchen washing dishes and just letting it run and run. And I said, ah, you know, you should turn it off. And she said, why do you worry about water? Because she saw that it was constantly being recycled. The water went through the pipes and goes back to the river. But depending on how we use it, there's energy embedded in that water. There are pollutants that we add when we use the water depending on how we, how we treat it and how we use it. Um, uh, you know, we really do have to be very thoughtful and careful about about how we use the water. Uh, so that there is enough for everybody.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Your, excuse me, your, your classmates should have listened to some more soul music. You know, you don't miss the water until the well runs. Alright. Well since you've been involved with, with for so many years, how do you see those concerns taking place and taking an influence into the domestic water market?
Speaker 5:Well, you know, it's sort of interesting. I think that for a long time in that the U S certainly, um, if we think kind of back to the, uh, seventies and eighties, in the early days of the clean water act, the emphasis was so much on cleaning up some very serious and egregious, uh, sources of pollution that were really marring our landscapes and quality of life in our communities. And so that was the focus, upgrading wastewater treatment plants and other points, sources of, um, pollution so that we can clean up our waterways. And that has been a great success. And I think during that time period, the um, uh, professional members who might have associated was a, I was with WEF or it's, um, went by other names in earlier days, but what is now West, um, we're really focused on, you know, how to build it, how to, making sure people knew how to operate it, making sure that permits were met, making sure that the fees were collected appropriately. It is to support the infrastructure, all that sort of stuff. And then, you know, things kind of cooked along for the next two or three decades as, um, uh, water quality expectations ratcheted down. And so, uh, adjustments needed to be made and upgrades needed to be made. But for the most part, um, uh, the utility operators and leaders, why to you keep a low profile? They, if things were going wrong, that's when, that's when the public knew about them and they wanted, they wanted things to go right. And for the public to really, um, uh, have to think about it too much. But, you know, fast forward to, I'd say the last, you know, eight, 10, or 10, 20 years. Um, we're starting to see a shift in how, uh, utilities and, um, water providers operate in our communities. Really seeing the kind of multiple benefits that, that, um, uh, we can provide to communities depending on how water is handled, rather than just trying to build our way out of water challenges as we have, uh, increased storm water challenges, increased, uh, non-point runoff challenges, uh, growing expectations, um, heightened expectations for how much phosphorus and nitrogen we can get out of our, our water. Wondering what are we going to do with the waste products from our water, um, how to turn them into useful products rather than waste products that have to be landfilled waste. Our utilities really started to shift and, um, think about resource recovery. That means recovering not just the clean water from our, um, our sewage stream, but also how to recover energy. There's a lot of energy embedded in our sewage, um, enough that, that potentially every, um, well what we tend to call wastewater treatment plants in the business. We like to call them water resource recovery facilities. But what each one of these facilities could hopefully become energy neutral, capturing enough energy from the, um, uh, both the heat and the, the um, uh, the, by generating bio gas from the, uh, the, the carbon compounds in that sewage, um, uh, to be able to operate their, their facilities.
Speaker 4:We're seeing some of that already today in food processing and agriculture, right?
Speaker 5:Absolutely. Absolutely. And there's a convergence, um, between a municipal wastewater and, um, the food sector and the food manufacturing sector, both from the agricultural side as well as, you know, those who are making our cookies and our hotdogs and our cheeses. Uh, there's so much energy embedded in the waste from those processes and they can either treat that right there on site or send it to their municipal facility. But either way, it's basically the same set of processes that are being used. Um, but there's so much energy and so many nutrients in those byproducts that it's, uh, it's really a crime to have to throw them away. We need to be capturing them and using them for, um, for beneficial purposes.
Speaker 4:So there's been a big shift in our attention to water shifting away from solely on pollution and purification to resource recovery and repurposing has censored.
Speaker 5:It really has been and it's a really exciting time to be in the water sector. Uh, there was a time where it was considered to be maybe the, uh, sleepy part of our, of our utilities, uh, primarily because there was so much concern around compliance and obviously compliance with the clean water act and the safe drinking water act. Those are still very important, but we're going beyond those now and really trying to, um, think about their role in, in sustainability when, you know, using water, moving water, treating water is a big part of our energy portfolio in, in the U S it takes a lot of energy to provide those services. And if we can slice that back, um, maybe even get it to zero, then zero in terms of net energy use, then we're really making a big contribution to, um, to the, the global climate concerns.
Speaker 4:And unlike a lot of resources, water really is part of a global ecosystem. So how, how do you see, uh, the domestic concerns that we're having in, in our industry and focused on water applying worldwide?
Speaker 5:Well, I think it kind of, it goes, um, it goes both ways. We can, we have things that we can learn from other countries and other countries have things that they can learn from us. Certainly. I think we're used to thinking of exporting our technologies and exporting our knowhow. And certainly we do a lot of training of the world's engineers here in this country and should be very proud of that. We also have a lot to learn from what's going on in other countries. Certainly resource recovery, uh, has generally been a bit ahead of things in Europe, in Western Europe. And so they sometimes set the pace for uh, uh,[inaudible] and then we can learn from things that they're doing. And that's definitely true of phosphorus recovery. They, Germany in particular has a more stringent limits than most places in the U S and so they're, um, moving ahead with that fairly aggressively. But also we think of developing countries and countries that may have sanitation that is not up to, well what most people have come to expect in the United States. There's a lot of work, especially being, um, catalyzed by the bill and Melinda Gates foundation to find sustainable sanitation practices and technologies that can operate not only, um, the technology to be able to operate, but also the sort of social and business structures that will allow them to operate. And, and the, there's a, the focus of that research is in not just providing a sanitation, but doing it in a way that uses little to no external water and little to no external energy input and, and, and to do it inexpensively. Um, yeah, you can do it if you're on the rocket ship, but, but that's a really expensive way to do it. How can we do it in communities that are, um, don't have a lot of extra cash sitting around, um, have a lot of other things they're trying to juggle. So they're not going to have, you know, PhD engineers in their community running their, their, uh, uh, sanitation, well the bill and Melinda Gates foundation research and, uh, the researchers that are being supported by them are primarily focused in developing countries. What gets developed there will be very useful back here in the U S we have plenty of communities in the United States that are struggling to, um, uh, to have, you know, what we considered to be kind of standard sanitation, but even beyond those rural communities that that could use kind of the same technology that that is being developed, uh, in, um, in other countries. Some of that will also come back and, and probably inform how we can build our cities to be, to use less water, less energy, potentially kind of a quasi off grid, if you will. Um, and it, it may really start to shake up the way that we see, um, uh, how our, how our central utilities are designed and operated. Uh, that's kinda looking way down the pike. But um, uh, if you're really trying to look far into the future, I think those are the kinds of things we can expect.
Speaker 4:It's an exciting time, isn't it?
Speaker 5:It really, it is. It really is. I guess some people may consider that to be scared of the unknown to be scary, but I think it's, I think it's exciting.
Speaker 4:If our listeners wanted to find out more information, where can they find you online?
Speaker 5:They can find me@broadmlbroadestatbroadviewcollaborative.com. That's L B R O a D D U s@broadviewcollaborative.com or at my URL, which is Broadview collaborative.com. That's my website and I always welcome input and questions from others. That's how I learned.
Speaker 2:Lynn, thank you so much for taking time to talk with us today.
Speaker 5:Oh, it's my pleasure. My pleasure. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2:And we'll see you at the next WEFTEC.
Speaker 5:You bet in in new Orleans in 2020. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Laissez[inaudible] roulette.
Speaker 5:Take care. Okay. Bye bye.
Speaker 1:[inaudible]
Speaker 2:for our state side listeners, November is time for Turkey dinner with the family and watching football all day. Richard, is your family a, a Turkey family or are they a ham family? Come Thanksgiving time. We are a Turkey and ham, but it's gotta be country ham. It can be city ham because we make it a certain way where you got to do the, you know, the Brown sugar and you know, it's really sweet and salty at the same time. Is it one of those hands that's cooked in dr pepper? Um, no. I've literally never heard of that. What about the, uh, have you ever seen the deep fried turkeys now that's actually delicious. My dad makes a fantastic deep fried Turkey and just remember to thaw that Turkey first where you drop it into the fire fryer. Otherwise you get to rocket ship Turkey. As long as you do it outside, I'll do, I think you're okay. Have you seen the, have you seen the videos of people launching their turkeys into space because they accidentally put a frozen Turkey into the fryer? Are we sure it was accidental? Well, maybe the ones that end up in the emergency room. I think those are accidents. Anyone else may just be looking for a YouTube celebrity? Well, I don't know because I've ended up in the hospital for a not accidentally shooting my friends and then shooting me with bottle rockets, so it could've just been on purpose and it was just a bad accident and that's why fireworks are limited to new years and 4th of July. That's true. No Thanksgiving fireworks. That's right. Well, if you're a long time subscriber to NBT, then you know November means more than just Turkey dinners. That also means NPDS annual buyer's guide is here. We're putting the finishing touches on the 2020 NPT buyer's guide, which is laid to be our biggest issue of the year. Inside. You'll find profiles of the pump, industries leading and most established companies as well as a few new faces. They'll be making a name for themselves in the coming year. If you're not a current subscriber, there's still time to sign up for a free 12 months subscription. Starting with our special November issue by visiting MPD mag.com and clicking the subscribe tab.
Speaker 6:[inaudible].
Speaker 2:This has been the efficiency point of podcast from NPT magazine, all of us on Twitter at mod pump mag for updates on our next episode. Today's episode was produced by Richard council. Until next time, I'm your host, Jay Campbell. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1:[inaudible].