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Leadership

Fires and Climate Change

February 22, 2015
Climate, Colorado, Environment, Fires, Leadership, local government, management
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The Union of Concerned Scientists reviewed recent wildfires in the west. One of the concerns they raised was that increased forest fires are both a climate change and a man-induced issue.  Wildfires on federal land has increased 75% on federally owned land.  Fire impacted areas are larger and impact more development which encroaches on those federal holdings.  We spend over $1 billion in fire fighting on federal lands each year.  But why?

Because many of the forest are in mountainous areas, fire season starts earlier in year with less mountain snowfall.  And that is  most years as snowfall accumulation decrease.  Temperatures are warmer, earlier with shortens the snow season.   Water runs off faster.  Of course the fact that we altered management philosophies to prevent all forest fires didn’t help because some burning is natural each year. As a result there is a huge reserve of unburned land out west.  The beetles did not help either as they left millions of acres of dead trees on mountain sides from Canada to New Mexico. Beetle infestation is clearly climate change driven.

The solutions are more difficult.  Building up next to federal land needs to be restricted.  Regulations in dealing with trees, bushes and underbrush in fire prone areas need to be enacted and enforced. Early spring fires set as control burns need to happen more frequently. But these are all local responses to a global climate problem.  That response is currently lacking.  These are leadership issues.

From a utility perspective, this issue may be significant.  We like those high, clean mountain streams.  But after a forest fire, those streams are often warmer and less clean.  The soot, ash and runoff from now barren land can create significant impacts on water plant, create major treatment alterations, increase costs, and risk contamination.  A friend some years ago suggested that utilities were instruments of social change.  The fact that we have treated water and sewer creates social change.  We need to protect water supplies and therefore we should be a part of the conversation on land use.  That requires some leadership.

 

Remembering Heros

February 19, 2015
Heros, Leadership, Responsibility, WW2
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Every winter, the Collings Foundation flies into southeast Florida with a restored B-17 Flying Fortress and a B-24 Liberator. These vintage airplanes are a major part of why the Allies won World War 2 and it is fantastic that people have an opportunity to see a flying 70 year old airplane.  I took a ride on this B17 several years back.  My Dad was on one for 25 missions in 1943.  I couldn’t get him on with me.  He figured that was enough even when I offered to pay the $350 for the 45 minute ride (well worth it!!).  Even reminding him that there would be no flak and no bullets streaming through the plane was not enough. But when I got on, there were 11 more guys my Dad’s age taking yet another ride in the B17.  Interesting if you flew in a B17, that’s what you wanted to ride – and I am sure vice versa with the B24.  The stories were great.  My Dad’s tour of the plane (on the ground) was enlightening.  Too bad these guys are leaving us.  I encouraged my students to take a look when the planes were next to campus.  I took a few hours before class to wander about.  Another year I will jump back on the B17.  If you get the opportunity, I encourage you all to do the same.

In the meantime, the question that we need to think about as we remember these men and women is where are these folks today?  Millions of men and women worked hard, fought and many died trying to benefit society, not themselves.  They were looking out for the world, their friends and families.  They were looking out for a way of life for the future.  Leadership requires a prospective view, a vision for tomorrow and a willingness to sacrifice and do what is needed to achieve that vision with the intent of providing betterment for all.  So as we look forward in 2015, this seems to be an obvious issue to explore.  I look forward to your views.

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B17 Flying Fortress

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B24 LIberator

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Mustang Fighter – this plane flies as well.  very cool to see.

Musings to Start February

February 15, 2015
communciations, engineering, Environment, groundwater, infrastructure, Leadership, Responsibility
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It’s February already!  Where has the year gone?  My apologies for a January without posts.  Things have been busy here and well, blogging got put on the back burner for me with the new semester starting and a new class to design.  But interesting kernels from January:

The World is Trying to Kill You – Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson

If you have a 20% failure rate, does that make a speculative technology a waste of time?  Conversely if your success is 20% is it successful?   I think no and no.

Have you noticed that February is the month we have been getting the worst winter weather in the Midwest and northeast? Not December or January?  I used to shovel snow all January and wait for the February respite.

Killer whales are now a protected species.  What does that say about the killer whales as SeaWorld?

There is a honeybee crisis.  No really, a real one.  Not the Jerry Seinfeld movie.  But the lesson is the same.  No bees, no food.  We need to figure out how we are killing them.  No doubt when we find out it will come back on pesticides, herbicides, monocultures, some combination of the above.  Not a good thing for farming.

The bison are under attack again in Montana.  Maybe Mother Nature is trying to tell us something – buffalo want to roam to their winter grazing fields.   And no brucelliosis, the issue rancher bring up as to why the bison are bad, has still NEVER been transmitted from bison to cattle.  Bison are way better on the land since there hooves are much large and they do not compact the ground as much.  But they are not as stupid as cattle.  They know they can walk thought a barbed wire fence.  They are bison afterall!

A Utah rancher shot and killed Echo, the female wolf that made it to the Grand Canyon last summer and became a national story.  He thought she was a coyote.  Um, I think wolves are a little bit bigger than coyotes.  We have a man with a gun who can’t tell what he’s shooting.  What could possibly go wrong with that?

Then there is the bear hunt in Florida because people move closer to the woods and cannot figure out how to secure their garbage of close their garage doors.  Bears get killed.  People…..

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Miami Beach installed $40 million dollars in pumps last summer, with an expected $300 million for.  The nearshore nutrient concentrations increased dramatically (a factor of six), which could adversely impact beach quality, fishing and reefs.  Unintended consequences, but an issue was brought up as a potential concern.

Education Problem of our own Making?

December 29, 2014
economy, Education, engineering, graduation, growth, Leadership, politics, Responsibility, Student Achievement, Students, sustainability, What could possibly go wrong?
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Orange County, FL has become the second school district I know of that has decide that giving students a zero on a assignment causes the kids to lose hope of passing so they just quit.  To address this problem, the worst grade you can give them is a 50 instead of a zero.  That way they can recover from one missed assignment.  Huh?!?!  No, you read this right.  The school superintendent was quoted in the SunSentinel as saying that only 43 percent of the students who received a 50 actually recovered to pass the class with a D.  I have several questions.  First, how does this policy teach these kids any responsibility?  For the kids that do their work, how is that fair?  What message does this policy send to the kids?  Be a lazy dumbass and do nothing and you can still pass?  That reinforces the concept of entitlement which we all agree is a problem in society that we need to overcome.  Finally, if one missed assignment causes the kids to fail, why are there not more assignments so missing one is not fatal?  That is what happens with my students (who still get a zero for not doing an assignment).

It would seem that such a policy is not based on an educational goal but more like a political one to improve school perception.  That is as bad an idea as having kids beg for money for uniforms and class trips etc.  Kids do not sell anything they just beg for money.  So are we teaching them that begging and panhandling is an acceptable career?  Seriously what impression does that provide to these young minds?  How does either experience prepare kids for the real world where doing nothing gets you fired, not rewarded, and begging for money vs actually work is also not rewarded.

Once upon a time, education was the purview of the wealthy.  American businesses argued that a basic education was needed to train a workforce for industrial jobs.    The American public education system was created with this in mind- to train the next generation of workers.  With education came great social and economic advancement.  We clearly are deviating from that goal.  Students need a good foundation in math, writing and reading (in English!), civics and science so they understand social responsibility, can communicate, understand how things work the world and can solve complex problems.  They do not need pseudo-science or politicized science, but real science.  Business understands this.  But where is the business community on job training in schools?  It would seem the business community has abdicated their responsibility to local districts who are trying to meet political goals, not economic goals.  Why are we not using all the extensive testing to figure out the strengths of students and encourage them to play to those strengths? Not every kid can go to college, or should, but that does not mean they cannot achieve or be successful.  They may need different training to hone their strengths.

Back in the day my Dad told me that as the education system was developed in his hometown of Detroit, students were given aptitude tests.  I was also.  The kids were divided up based on skills and aptitude.  Students were even sent to different schools as they got older that tailored programs to their interests and skills set.  Kids that the schools system felt had the aptitude to succeed in college had different courses than students that were less academically included but perhaps more mechanical, more artisan, more labor, clerical, etc.  Different kids go training to help them succeed with their skills.  Less academic did not mean less inclined to succeed or be successful. just differently.  And they had a better chance to be successful.  We seem to miss that today.

Today we have parents insisting that everyone be treated the same, and that no kid gets left behind.  But putting kids with different aptitudes, maturity, and academic inclinations in one class is destined to either fail for all, or fail for everyone but the average.  Such a protocol begets policies like Orange (and Broward) County that direct teachers to adjust grades so “Little Johnny” doesn’t feel bad.  Extensive college prep testing and disconnected learning discourage the less academic kids, leading to dropping out, or other behaviors.  Such policies and expectations by parent and political leaders are not helpful for building an educated society.  Instead we need to search further into the root causes.  Are there too few assignments?  Are they too disconnected for students to appreciate?  Should we sort out strengths and treat different students differently to discourage disinterest?  How do we assess their strengths and design programs to help students succeed.   And who takes responsibility for these kids?  And perhaps we should revisit some of the lessons learned from the early years of the industrial development (1930s) to figure out what they did well, and see how policies today frustrate those goals.  Maybe the way forward is rooted in the past.

Misconcepted?

December 18, 2014
communciations, Education, Leadership, local government, management, politics
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There is a recent iPos MORI study that evaluated the perception and reality of issues in 14 western, industrialized countries to determine how well the perception of the populace matched reality.  The US was one of those surveyed.  No surprise, most Americans’ perception is very different than reality because the news and politics get in the way of the facts.  The study found for example that Americans perceived that teenage birth rates were 24 % of girls vs the real number of 3%, that 32% of the population is immigrants vs 13% actual, and that the majority of people perceiving welfare were black vs. the reality of 39% (38% are white and 15% Hispanic).  The states with the largest number of welfare recipients are in the northeast, which are also the states that received the smallest amount of federal funding per capita.  Talk about misperceptions.

While other countries have similar misperceptions, perpetuating misconceptions is part of the extreme discourse in Congress and among different constituencies. When we perceive the issues incorrectly and our elected officials do nothing to improve that perception?  What does that say about them?  No wonder we cannot get infrastructure to the top of our funding needs?  They perceive if you get water, can drive on it or flush it away, things must be fine?

Indirect and Potable Reuse Future?

December 15, 2014
Aquifer storage and recovery, Colorado, direct potable reuse, economy, Environment, groundwater, Holistic Water Planning, indirect potable reuse, infrastructure, innovation, Leadership, local government, resource depletion, sustainability
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2014 is almost over.  Hard to believe.  I have been attending or annual Florida Section AWWA conference, meeting up with old friends, making new ones and learning new things.  Conferences and connections allow us to do our jobs more efficiently because as we learn how to solve problems or where we can find a means to solve whatever problem we encounter.  It is a valuable experience that I encourage everyone to get involved with, especially young people who need to make connections to improve their careers.  The technical sessions seemed to be well received and popular.  That means that there are issues that people want to hear about.  Things we focused on were alternative water supplies, water distribution piping issues, disinfection byproducts, ASR and reuse projects.

The reuse projects focused on Florida efforts to deal with 40 years of reuse practice and a movement toward indirect potable reuse. This is the concept where we treat wastewater to a standard whereby it can be put into a waterway upstream of a water supply intake or into the aquifer upstream of wells.  The discussion was extended to a number of discussions about water shortages and solutions for water limited areas.  Florida averages 50-60 inches of rain per year as opposed to the 6-10 inches in areas of the southwest or even 15-20 inches in the Rockies which makes the concept of water limitations seem a bit ludicrous for many, but we rely on groundwater that is recharged by this rainfall for most of our supplies, a lack of topography for storage and definitive wet and dry seasons that do not coincide with use.

The situation is distinctly different in much of the US that relies on surface waters or is just plain water limited.  We have a severe multi-year drought going on in California and huge amounts of groundwater being used for irrigation in many rain-challenged areas.  That is what all those crop-circles are as you fly over the Plains states and the wet.  Where you see crop circles, think unsustainable water supplies.  They are unsustainable because there is no surface water and the recharge for these aquifers is very limited.  Most leakance factors in aquifers is over estimated and hence water levels decline year after year.   Water limited places need answers because agriculture often out-competes water utilities, so in the worst of those areas, there are discussions about direct potable reuse (which occurs in Texas).

Direct and indirect potable reuse are offered as answers which is why this topic was popular at our conference.  A recent 60 Minutes presentation included a tour and discussion of the Orange County Groundwater Replenishment program, where wastewater is treated and injected into the ground for recovery by wells nearer to the coast.  They discussed the process (reverse osmosis, ultraviolet light and peroxide) and they took a drink.  “Tastes like water” was Leslie Stahl’s comment – not sure what she expected it to taste like, but it provides a glimpse into the challenge faced by water utilities in expanding water supplies.   Orange County has been injecting water for many years into this indirect potable reuse project.  The West Coast Basin Barrier Project and several others in California have similar projects.  South Florida has tested this concept 5 times, including one by my university, but no projects have yet been installed.

But until recently, there were no direct potable reuse projects where wastewater is directly connected to the water plant.  But now we have two – both in Texas with a number of potential new projects in the pipeline.  Drought, growth, water competition have all aligned to verify that there many are areas that really do not have water, and what water they do have is over allocated.  A 50 year plan to manage an aquifer (i.e.. to drain it) is not a sustainable plan because there may not be other options.  But Texas is not alone.  Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, The Dakotas, Kansas Oklahoma and I am sure others have verified water limitations and realize that sustainable economic activity is intrinsically linked to sustainable water supplies.  Conservation only goes so far and in many of these places, conservation may be hitting its limits.  Where your rainfall is limited and/or your aquifer is deep, replenishable resource is not always in the quantities necessary for economic sustainability.  Water supplies and economic activity are clearly linked.

So the unimaginable, has become the imaginable, and we now have direct potable reuse of wastewater.  Fortunately we have the technology – it is not cheap, but we have demonstrated that the reverse osmosis/ultraviolet light/advanced oxidation (RO/UV/AOP) process will resolve the critical contaminant issues (for more information we have a paper we published on this). From an operational perspective, RO membranes, UV and chemical feeds for AOP are easy to operate, but there are questions about how we insure that the quality is maintained.  The technical issues for treatment are well established.  Monitoring is a bit more challenging – the question is what to monitor and how often, but even this can be overcome with redundancy and overdosing UV.

But drinking poop-water? The sell to the public is much more difficult.  It is far easier to sell communities without water on the idea, but the reality we need to plan ahead.  There are no rules.  There are no monitoring requirements, but we MUST insure the public that the DPR water they are drinking is safe.  WE are gaining data in Texas.  California and Texas are talking about regulations.  The University of Miami has been working of a project where they have created a portion of a dorm that makes its own water from wastewater.  Results to come, but the endeavor shows promise.

An Answer: If the assumption of all economists, government officials and investors is that the population must increase exponentially, what does that suggest for our future?

October 29, 2014
Banking industry, funding, growth, infrastructure, Krugman, Leadership, management, peak oil, resource depletion, Revenues, sustainability, Uncategorized, water supplies
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“If the assumption of all economists, government officials and investors is that the population must increase exponentially, what does that suggest for our future?” was a question asked a few days back.  Did you ponder this at all?  I suggest we should and here is why.  An exponential growth rate assumes a certain percent increase every year.  That means the increase in population is greater the farther out you go.  That doesn’t really make sense except perhaps at one point in Las Vegas (but not anymore).  The economy cannot really expand at a rate greater than the expansion of the population because there is no one to buy the goods or increase the demand, which is why increasing the US population is going to be viewed favorably by all politicians regardless what they say today.  House values do not increase faster than population increase unless they are in a bubble, nor does the stock market really (inflation adjusted).  Your water sales will not increase faster than your system’s population increase for any extended period of time either, so an assumption of ever increasing water sales is likely to be an overestimation sooner as opposed to later.  And then what – you have to raise rates, and keep raising rates to keep up because your demands are too low?

And what if your growth stagnates, or goes backwards as many did in 2009/2010?  That was a severe problem for most entities, causing layoffs and higher prices, pay cuts and deferral of needed improvements, mostly because no one had reserves because people thought the good times would roll on forever.  Layoffs, price hikes, pay cuts and deferral of needed improvements do help society (of course if you had lots of reserves, you weathered the recession without a problem, but too many did not).  Keep in mind the repair, replacement, and maintenance needs, along with ongoing deterioration, do not diminish with time or lack of new customers.  We have relied on new people to add money to solve old as well as new problems for many years.  What is the contingency if growth stops?

So a growth scenario makes us feel better and more confident when we borrow funds.  But if growth does not stop, where is the water to come from?  What are the resources that will be used faster?  Where does the power come from to treat the water or cool the houses?  And the cooling water to cool those power plants?  Even renewable resources are limited – most metals and oil have likely passed their peaks as far as production and water does not always fall consistently.  We have overstressed aquifers and over allocated surface waters, especially in the west.  So while growth makes us feel good financially, we need answers to the growth scenario despite the fact that we may have more funding.  Many resources are not limitless, but an exponential growth pattern ignores this.  Locally growth maybe less of an issue, but society wise?  Maybe a societal problem, or maybe we get into extreme completion with each other.  Some how that doesn’t look like a solution either

WATCH YOUR DATA

October 20, 2014
economy, electronic data, finance, innovation, Leadership, local government, predators, Risk, Uncategorized
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Ray Rice gets video-taped punching out his wife in an elevator in a casino.  Wes Welker gets videotaped at the Kentucky Derby looking like he has imbibed a bit too much.  We have couple students that, well, let’s just say those photos won’t help them get jobs.  And everyday people are You-tubed doing stupid things they wouldn’t want to get caught doing.  And hackers download photos of celebrities in various states of undress that they thought were secure.  We do not understand the Cloud and we do not understand all the wires that make the internet a useful and productive tool that houses the cloud.  The internet is a great information sharing tool, but almost anything is exchangeable.  To date the internet is open to all, but the wires are owned by corporations.  If you watched the 60 Minutes episode recently with Michael Lewis as he talked about Wall street brokers gaming the stock market by using internet cabling to accelerate their access to your data (his book is Flash Boys), you should not be surprise if corporations won’t want to restrict those tools that help them, including cables and satellites.  Jim Hightower in a recent Lowdown newsletter outlines the reasons we should be watching the mergers of the large entities like Time-Warner who own and therefore control the internet connections.  They can and will impose fees for access of certain types.  Instead of equal access, those who pay can and will receive preferential connections.  They also will get access to data.  Wall Street saw the benefit of using the wiring and cloud and data sharing to their advantage, even when it is your data, so certainly these media giants know all about it.  It makes sense form a business perspective.  It works against you, me and our local water and sewer utilities who do not have the luxury of being able to pay and pay for better access.  Keep it on your radar screens – at home and at work.  Keep in mind deregulation and merger of the airlines didn’t reduce air fares or make service necessarily better.

A GRIM FISCAL FAIRY TALE

October 17, 2014
Banking industry, Congress, debt funding, Economic Bubbles, economy, finance, funding, income disparity, Insurance, Leadership, planning, politics, Responsibility, retirement, Revenues, Risk, sustainability, Uncategorized
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Once upon a time, people worked until they died.  But the longer people lived, the more infirmities impacted older people, and the concept of stopping work came into play.  So these folks labored all their lives, put some money away in a safe place, like a bank, where someone else would watch over an manage their money until they needed it.  Then one day, they found out that the banks have gambled and lost on real estate, and their money was gone.  There was no government to bail anyone out.  So the people had to try to go back to work, became beggars and destitute or died.  The government thought this was unfair to those older folks who had worked so hard, but through absolutely no fault of their own, had lost everything.  So the government decided that it would “tax” people a portion of their income, and put it into a retirement system.  People could retire at 65, and of course they were only expected to live another r3 or 4 years.  There were 16 people laying in for every person taking out.  And the government told the banks that they could not gamble with people’s hard earned savings, passed legislation and created an insurance pool to backstop losses by criminal or unethical activity.  All was good and the people were happy.

As time went on some things changed.  For one, people lived more than 3 or 4 years.  The population retirees increased, and the ratio dropped to 1:10 and then to 1:6 ration of retirees:workers, but the “tax” did not go up, but investments were made that increased the pool.  It was called good management.  The government also encouraged people to save money by deferring taxes, which they did, and the banks used it to make money.  All good as long as the investors gambled well.  They gambled so well, they were able to talk the government into undoing the anti-gambling rules from the past, so their pool to invest was twice as much.  And the markets grew and the portfolios grew and the people were happy.

And then it came to pass that the banks again gambled on real estates, and created complicated investment tools to hide the risk, but the risk was exposed and half the money was gone overnight.  And the retired were wondering about jobs again.  But there were no jobs.  And the employed now had fewer jobs.  So less people paid into the system.  And the people were sad.  And mad because they thought they were being protected from the gambling of the past.  They did not understand.

And the government could supply no answers because they had changed the rules and they knew the people would be unhappy, so the government felt there was no choice, so they borrowed money, and bailed out the banks.  And some people were happy.  And some people were concerned about all that debt.  And some people wondered why it was that history could repeat itself and put society at risk.  And some people asked why people who did bad things were not punished.

And none of these questions has been answered.  Good thing that these fairy tales don’t depict anything real right?