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What do you believe are the three biggest water challenges in the U.S.?

February 15, 2013
Climate, communciations, Environment, finance, funding, infrastructure, Leadership, management, Marketing water, planning, Uncategorized, water sewer management, water supplies
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This question has been asked a couple times on on-line discussion groups.  It usually results in a short list of answers.  The number one answer is usually getting a handle on failing infrastructure.  The US built fantastic infrastructure systems that allowed our economy to grow and use to be productive, but like all tools and equipment, it degrades, or wears out with time.  In addition, newer infrastructure is more efficient and works better. In many ways we are victims of our own success. People have grown used to the fact that water is abundant, cheap, and safe. Open the tap and here it comes. Flush the toilet and there it goes, without a thought as to what is involved to produce, treat and distribute potable water as well as to collect, treat, and discharge wastewater. Looking to the future, we should take education as one of our challenges.  Our economy and out way of life requires access to high quality water and waste water. So this will continue to be critical.  But utilities have not been proactive in explaining the condition of buried infrastructure in particular, and need more data. The same goes for roadways and many buildings.

Cities are sitting on crumbling systems that have suffered from lack of adequate funding to consistently maintain and upgrade.  In part this is because some believe that clean drinking water is a right instead of a privilege to be paid for. We gladly pay hundreds of dollars per month for cable television and cell phones, but scream at the costs for water delivered to out tap. The discussion usually continues along the lines of utilities are funding at less than half the level needed to meet the 30 year demands while relying on the federal government, which is trying to get out of funding for infrastructure for local utilities. Utilities are a local issue which is some ways makes this easier. Our local leaders to send help with the education (after we educate them), send less money going to the general funds and more retained by utilities.

Perhaps where we have failed is in educating the public. Public agencies are almost always reactive, as opposed to pro-active, which is why we continuously end up in defensive positions and at the lower end of the spending priorities. So we keep deferring needed maintenance. The life cycle analysis concepts used in business would help. A 20 year old truck, pump, backhoe, etc just aren’t cost effective to operate and maintain. We are not very successful at getting this point across.

Money is an issue, and will always be, but the fact that local officials are not stressed about infrastructure is in part because utility personnel are very good at our jobs, minimizing disruptions and keeping the public safe. We are not “squeaky wheels” and we don’t market our product at all. Afterall, is cable or your phone really more valuable that water and sewer?

SUSTAINABILITY THROUGHOUT TIME – BUT NOW WHAT?

January 10, 2013
communciations, Environment, finance, groundwater, infrastructure, Leadership, management, Marketing water, planning, sustainability, Uncategorized, water supplies
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I was cruising through Glacier Bay National Park when I wrote this blog.  It was just one of those inspirational momentsl  If you have never seen it, you should, especially as a water professional.  The entire park is a testament to the power of water and the result of changes in climate cycles that affect the hydrologic cycle.  I will post video of the journey separately, but suffice it to say that the inherent beauty of the place is difficult to describe.  Needless to say with a large concentration of glaciers in the area (most retreating), there is copious amounts of water (for now).  The Pacific Glacier has retreated 65 miles, yes MILES, in 300 years in part because of changes in oceanic moisture and evaporation.  The native people, Tlingets, moved and survived based on glacier flows end ebbs.  But that’s not my point.  Seeing this much water leads to an entirely different perspective, one that is helped by Brian Fagan’s book, Elixir which outlines the history of civilizations as they were affected by harnessing of water, or the lack of ability to do so.  Same thing applies to the Tlingets here.

Historically the key was to rely on surface waters where they were consistent, to manage water locally and carefully for the benefit of all, and when surface waters were not consistent enough to be reliable year after year, quanats, shallow wells and other mechanisms were used to extract water from glacial till or adjacent to rivers (riverbank filtration or infiltration galleries in today’s vernacular).  Or people moved or died out. The ancient people did not have the ability to dig too deep, but were creative in means to manage available supplies.

Contrast this to today where over the last 50 years we have been able to extract water from ever expanding, generally deeper sources, but to what end?  Certainly we have “managed “ surface waters, by building dams, diversions and offstream reservoirs.  These supply half the potable water use in the United States and Canada as well as a lot of irrigation.  But groundwater has been an increasing component.  Fagan makes the point that deep groundwater sources are rarely sustainable for any period of time, and that many in the past have recognized this limitation.  But have we?

Maybe not so much.  A couple years ago I was at a conference out west.  The session I was speaking at involved sustainable groundwater, a major issue for AWWA, ASCE, NGWA and the utilities and agricultural folks around the world.  One of the speakers was a geologist with the State of Utah.  Her paper concerned the issues with decreasing groundwater levels in the St. George and Cedar City, areas in southwestern Utah, where population growth is a major issue.  Her point was that despite the State efforts, they had significant drawdowns across the area.  Keep in mind that the USGS (Reilly, et al, 2009) had identified southwestern Utah as one of many areas across the US where long term decreasing groundwater levels.  My paper was a similar issue for Florida, so I stopped partway into my paper and asked her a question:  has any hydrogeologist or engineer trying to permit water in the area ever said the water supply was not sustainable?”  The room got really quiet.  She looked at me and said, “well, no.”  In fact the audience chimed in that they had never heard this from their consultants either.  The discussion was informative and interesting.  Not sure I really finished my presentation because of the discussion.

To be fair, consultants are paid to solve problems, and for water supplies, this means finding groundwater and surface water limited areas like Utah when their clients request it.  So you don’t expect to pay your consultant to find “no water.”  But where does that lead us?  The concept of sustainable yield from confined aquifer systems is based on step drawdown tests.  Ignoring the details, what this constitutes is a series of short term tests of the amount of drawdown that occurs at different pumping levels. AWWA’s manual on Groundwater can give you the details, but the results are short-term and modeling long-term results requires a series of assumptions based on the step drawdown test.  This is that had been submitted in support of permits in Utah (and many other places).  As discussed in the conference session, clearly there is something wrong with this method of modeling and calculation because, well, the results did not match the reality.  The drawdowns increased despite modeling and step drawdown tests showing the demands were sustainable.  Clearly wrong.  Competing interests, the need to cast a wider net, and many other issues are often not considered.  The results play out throughout the world.  Confined aquifers are often not sustainable, a potential problem for much of agriculture in the farm belt of the US.  Are we headed the same direction as ancient people?

The good news is that these same hydrogeologists and engineers have the ability to help solve the sustainability problem.  We need a new definition for “safe yield.”  We need a better means to estimate leakance in aquifers.  A project I did with injection wells indicated that leakance was overestimated by a factor of 1000 to 10,000, which would drastically alter the results of any model.  More work needs to be undertaken here.  The overdraw of confined groundwater is a potential long-term catastrophe waiting to happen.  And the consequences are significant.  The question is can we adapt?

But when we start to look at resource limitations, who stands up and says, this type of withdrawal is not the right answer.  We need another one.  Where is that leadership moment?

Defining Leadership – Who are leaders, and who is not?

January 6, 2013
communciations, Environment, finance, Leadership, management, Uncategorized, water sewer management
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One of the conundrums with leadership is actually trying to define what it is.  An analogy is ethics.  We know when we don’t see it.  The reverse is a little more of a challenge.  But trying to define ethics is quite a challenge.

I teach a class on ethics to professional engineers and to undergraduate students.  One of the more interesting exercises is trying to define ethical behavior.  Ethics is an issue that comes up on an ongoing basis, affecting politicians, engineers, consultants, and utility staff members.  But what are ethics?  To answer this question, or begin to, we can turn to philosophy to attempt to define ethics.  A cursory review indicates three potential definitions of ethical people:

  • A set of values and lives by them.
  • Any set of values which are shared by a group of people.
  • A set of values that are universally accepted.

Let’s take a look at each of these.  First is a person with a set of values and lives by them.  What do we make of this definition?  Do we accept it?  Or a person like this?  The first definition is pretty easy to explain away.  Few people buy into this as an ethical person because the values can vary and may include individuals with individual sets of ideals (Robin Hood) or people with frequently unaccepted behaviors (anti-social, etc.).

So obviously, a person with any set of values which are shared by a group of people set of values and lives by them must be better.  What do we make of this definition?  Do we accept it?  Or a person like this?  Seems ok.  These people share many of the same beliefs and conform to an accepted set of “rules” and acceptable behavior.  Engineers are among the groups with common values.  But alas, this definition is also pretty easy to explain away.  Few people buy into this as an ethical person because the values can vary and may include individuals with individual sets of ideals. Suggestions brought up by class members were:  cult members, terrorists, certain political regimes. etc.

So obviously, a person with a set of values that are universally accepted must be perfect? What do we make of this definition?  Do we accept it?  Or a person like this?  Name one example of a universally accepted value.  There are times when killing is ok.  Honesty sounds great, but honesty isn’t when it hurts someone deeply.  So actually none of these definitions is useful.

Another tactic is to look at professions to see if there are commonalities among our perception of ethical and unethical professions (ignoring whether or not the perception reflects reality or not).  There are some common examples that come up (sorry car salesmen, mechanics, lawyers and politicians).  The commonality with the professions perceived to be unethical is money – they perform a service for someone specific and expect to be paid for it.  There is limited quality control.

On the other hand, those professions viewed as ethical by most are things like public safety, education and technical people.  Generally speaking the perception is that these people serve the public.  There is a clear delineation in people’s minds about professions, money and public service that shape their view about ethics.  That makes it a lot easier to see who is and who is not ethical.

Ethics provides an analogy for leadership.  It is hard to define leadership, because it comes in many forms and is often specific to the approach to a situation.  A quarterback who is a great leader of the field, might not be the best choice to leader the reorganization of a major corporation.  Both positions require leadership, but the skill sets required for the positions is situational.  Because we cannot define the skill set for every situation, we tend to look at examples of people who are leaders or who have exhibited leadership in the past and try to draw from their experience, what made them a leader.

A problem is that we often don’t recognize leadership at the time it is occurring. It is so much easier to identify people who are not exhibiting good leadership, or who’s idea of leadership clearly is self-serving or narrowly focused; people will not follow these types of people for long because there is no shared benefit.  A person is not a leader if they do not display a consistent vision of where they want to take the organization. Changing direction constantly disrupts the efficient flow of work efforts and frustrates followers/employees.  People who do not add value to the organization, can only ”lead” by coercion, which is the antithesis of leadership.  Leadership requires no coercion.  We often come across people who cannot communicate their ideas clearly, another hallmark of a leadership failure. If people do not follow, the leader is failing to lead.

So perhaps, like ethics, we can find leadership by looking at the opposite of what we view as the failure to lead.  That means leaders should be able to communicate clearly, their vision.  And they need that vision or direction that people buy into.  We can evaluate leadership by those who follow, and their willingness to follow.  Leaders must bring value to the organization, as well as skills and knowledge.  Because leaders tend to know their limitations, they will bring in people to fill those gaps.  That means leaders will hire the best people they can, without worrying about whether they are vying for some future position. Leaders have confidence in their abilities, and strive to make everyone better in the organization.  Keep in mind, if you set someone up to fail, they will.  It is a failure of management and leadership to put people in the position to fail.  When provided a challenge, it is how the leader attacks it, and how they marshal resources to succeed.  As a result, leaders may exist at every level of the organization.  The challenge is seeking them out, and putting them in position to succeed.

If all this sound vaguely like football or the battlefield, well it should.  In the NFL, the skill sets are similar, it is the mental aspects, the vision, the ability to work together, the willingness to do the little things that do not always get noticed, and the ability to cover someone’s weaknesses by exploiting your strengths that wins football games.  You need talent, but you need leadership to be successful.  The teams with lots of great players that never win are legion.  Teams change coaches, and players, trying to find that tri9ght mix.  When the team finds the mix, success follows.  Lincoln found this during the Civil War.  He spent time with the troops.  He communicated his vision to them, expressed his appreciation for their efforts, supported them and they were enthusiastic supporters.  HIs generals, well another matter.  So Lincoln kept changing generals until he found Grant who would fight and end the war, his vision of the end game – to win.

Now the question is where are our water leaders.  Who are they and what is their vision…

Leadership Part 3 Examples?

December 24, 2012
Climate, Environment, finance, funding, infrastructure, Leadership, management, Marketing water, planning, sustainability, Uncategorized, water sewer management, water supplies
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Leadership Part 3

One of the themes in the prior two posts on leadership was that leaders are defined by a vision, the people who follow the leader and the ability to market the vision.  We often fail on the marketing end, especially in dealing with water and sewer infrastructure issues.  We know the infrastructure is in poor condition and that billions, perhaps trillions are needed to upgrade the system to serve our needs.  But pipes are hidden and parks are far more glamorous, so guess what gets funded?  At least until a failure occurs.

I teach an elected officials class for water/wastewater issues.  The all acknowledge that a failure o f the utility system is a huge issue and the electorate and elected officials are often looking for “the cause” or someone who is responsible.  In other words, someone to fire.  It is every utility director’s nightmare, and a nightmare for many elected officials as well.  Yet a 4 hour outage in a year is a 99.96% success rate.  My students would be raising hell with the dean and president if I failed them for only 99.96% correct answers.  And rightly so.  Why are utilities any different?  Public health sure, but the systems can fail, and the condition that many are in warrants far more attention to potential to fail unless we can market to the public the need to invest.  Yet how many city managers, elected officials and finance director acknowledge any accountability for failures?  The investigation into the Walkerton Ontario failure indicated that the employees who falsified records, the governing body, the water advisory body and other officials all the way to the province had culpability in the failure of the system that made half the town sick and killed a number of residents.  Utility folks need to market the need to protect public health better, to make the public understand.

Marketing is a difficult skill set.  I can tell you sales in not one of my skills.  Common among engineers who tend to be more technical in nature, letting the data guide us.  Even so, we have successes.  Think about the City of Los Angeles.  The only reason large numbers of people can live in LA is the aqueducts that were started back in 1900s by William Mulholland under the guidance of Mayor Fred Eaton.  The vision was to grow LA but the limitation was water supplies.  The aqueducts sparked water wars (think Chinatown, the movie), and developed through the 1930s.  Hetch Hetchy, over 100 miles east, was established as San Francisco’s water supply back in 1913 as well.  The reservoir system continues to supply San Francisco today.  Denver Water acquired and/or constructed reservoirs and tunnels to the west side of the Rockies for water supplies prior to 1940, realizing that sustained growth in the Denver area was not available east of the Rockies. .  Pinellas County and Orange County California started projects to reuse treated wastewater for irrigation of private yards, and aquifer recharge in the 1970s to sustain their supplies.  Sustainability of water supplies, management of water sources including wastewater and stormwater as a part of an integrated program and sustaining the financial and infrastructure condition of the utility are the long-term priorities.  We need to find those visionary projects and people today.

So here’s the assignment.  Let’s find where those leaders are today, and identify what makes them a leader.

Leadership Part 2

December 20, 2012
Climate, communciations, Environment, finance, funding, infrastructure, Leadership, management, Marketing water, planning, sea level rise, stormwater, sustainability, Uncategorized, water sewer management, water supplies
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Among the many things I do is work with college seniors as they get ready to graduate and hit the job market.  The changes you use in many of these students over that last year in school is often significant, and in some cases remarkable.  Different students grow differently and the potential starts to appear.  Some gain confidence in their skills and begin to grow into the profession.  Some of these students are likely to make good leaders in the field in the future.  But trying to guess which ones and why it is often a challenge.  However I want them all to have some concept of what leadership is all about.  For many of them, they will end up in the water/wastewater/stormwater field.  They are going to have to deal with tough issues like rebuilding deteriorating infrastructure, sea level rise, climate changes, stressed water supplies, energy demands and a more demanding electorate.  They will recommend increasing water and wastewater fees.  But will they have the skills to encourage decision-makers to move forward with the needs of the system.  You see, that’s where leadership comes into play.  Often it is little things that set things into motion.  Our engineers go into the world with a technical skills et, that ability to learn to solve problems with solutions.  We try to encourage them to be creative.  An assigned reading is “The Cult of the Mouse” by Henry Caroselli, who urges creativity above profits in the workplace.  Mr. Caroselli is right in that it is creativity that allows us to come up with innovative solutions, the ones that change how we live.  It is also where the patents and economic opportunities exist.  America rose to greatness in the 20th century in large part because of automobiles – we figured that out and it made some many things possible.  Computers became common place in the latter part of the century.  We use the technology for both in the water/wastewater/stormwater industry.  In fact they have made us so much more efficient that costs have not climbed as fast as they might have, which is why cable tv is normally more expensive than your water bill.  Which one do you need to live?  My hope is that today’s students figure out energy solutions that will carry us forward as a world leader in the 21st century.  Those alternative energy options, greater efficiency of current technology.  Each will allow the utility industry to improve it’s efficiency further.  The City of Dania Beach built the world’s first LEED Gold water plant.  That took a little vision on the part of the utility director Dominic Orlando.  And a cooperative team of consultants and students.  When we give these projects to young people we can be surprised because they often don’t know that “that’s not the way we do it.”  Well that’s exactly what Mr. Caroselli said.

So we look for leadership.  Creativity, innovation and the “Can-do” mentality are part of leadership, but not all.  There is that ability to set a vision, like Mr. Orlando did in Dania.  There is the ability to convince decision-makers of the wisdom of an idea, as opposed to doing like we always did to make the shareholder happy as Mr. Caroselli noted.   Selling innovation is often the hard part because that’s were the costs are.  But there is more.  Often the selling of a good idea is difficult.  You can be ridicules by the status quo.  Many ideas are just lost in the shuffle because they never receive a voice.

Leadership is often not understood at the time it is occurring.  Ok, maybe we figured this out when Lincoln was President, but if you read accounts of his Presidency, the early years are marked with indecision and backtracking before he got it right.  Most of that is forgotten in lieu of the ultimate results.  Many of the issues we face today need real leadership to create a long-term solution.  The “fiscal cliff” issue is a prime example, as it the long-term need for solutions for social security, Medicare and medical costs in general.  The need to fix the infrastructure that made our economy strong should be among those priorities also.  Remember, we don’t remember the councilman, mayor, legislator. manager, director or President who did not raise taxes or water bills.  They do remember those who solved problems

Defining Leadership Part 1

December 17, 2012
communciations, infrastructure, Leadership, management, sustainability, Uncategorized, water sewer management
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What exactly is leadership?  How is defined?  How do we find leaders?  What are the skills required to be a leader?  These are tough questions, and the answers are often and murky as the Colorado or Mississippi Rivers in springtime.  If picking leaders was easy, all organizations would be successful.  But they are not.  If leadership skills were easily defined, there would be a lot more schools trying to teach leadership , and they would create generations of leaders.  But they don’t.  It is so much easier to see leadership after the fact, not beforehand, and that is the challenge.  This about our elected officials.  Let’s start with the President and Congress.  We elect these people to lead us.  Periodically we pick one who leads us, often no so much.  No offense intended here, but can we really say that Herbert Hoover, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, or Warren Harding were great leaders/  They rank in US News’s worst 10 presidents of all time.  And our perception is generally the same (assuming you know enough US history to know these characters).   Was it their fault?  Hard to tell.  Circumstances were not in their favor, but what did they do to lead the nation from the difficulties?

Ulysses Grant and Zachary Taylor were great leaders on the battlefield, but they were failures as President.  Why? Different skill sets.  Their best skills were not transferrable to the Presidency.  Interestingly, Lincoln’s forays into combat in 1841, were utterly unsuccessful, he was demoted from Captain to private.  HE took this failure as an opportunity to learn and study, and then find talent to implement the plan (although it could be argued he dallied far to long with various generals in the Army of the Potomac, before promoting Grant). But we see Lincoln very differently than those noted above in part because they were able to lead us through difficult times.  History treats FDR, Teddy Roosevelt and Kennedy similarly.  But how did we pick these leaders in those times?  And how to we find ones for today?

Defining leadership appears o be better defined by identifying what is not leadership.  Scott Adams’ Dilbert comic strip has a book entities “Don’t step in the Leadership.”  The entire comic is focused on the silliness of managers trying to “lead” their charges.  Apparently Mr. Adams has many years worth of stories to tell.  Our reality is similar to Dilbert’s:  we see many examples of people who are not leaders.  Leadership and being the utility director, CEO, mayor, commissioner or any position “in charge” of an organization are often not related.  That is why if you ask, you can find out from the employees who are the “go to” people, the ones they rely on and follow.  Those are the true leaders.  They often outlast the leadership, especially is the positional leadership does not tap into their skill set.

People often desire to be the boss and to lead the organization but many never actually lead just like failed Presidents.  Some may think they are in charge, but if you lead no one, you are not a leader regardless of your title.  A leader is defined by those who follow him/her.  Leaders require no coercion to get people to follow through on their vision.  But a vision is needed.  It may not be a popular vision, and it may not be easy, but your followers must buy into it and be active in pursuing it.  One problem with today’s version of leadership in politics is the fear of tough decisions, or making part of the electorate unhappy.  CEOS often follow the corporate need to make money every quarter, at the expense of the long-term.  How many companies have failed to keep up with technology, upgrade facilities (at a cost), or alter their products to maintain market share?  It took years for the Big Three automakers to figure out that people did not want gas guzzling cars as gas prices increased, at the cost of market share, growth and profits.  The examples are endless.

So what to we look for with potential leaders?  That’s the question.  We want a vision.  We want skills and knowledge about that vision.  We want competency.  People skills.  The ability to take responsibility for the failures, and to share in success with those that supported the effort.  To bring value to the organization.  So next post let’s look at some examples.  In the meantime, post some thoughts on what you think leaders should look like.

Technology gets in the way

September 5, 2012
infrastructure, sustainability, Uncategorized, water sewer management
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It’s been two weeks since I last posted.  My apologies.  It is amazing how dependent we are on technology working.  So I was in Alaska.  Upon my return, the internet was not working.  Then I find out the hard drive on my 1.5 year old computer is crashing and must be replaced, and for whatever reason I cannot find my emails even though they were backed up :(.  Tropical storm Isaac came by.  More travel to Denver.  All the while, I don’t have access to the internet.  It throws a light on the dependency we have on technology.

We all depend on technology.  Much of the increase in productivity experienced in the US in the 1990s, when we made more strides in productivity than any other nation, was due to technology.  It makes our lives easier, delegates repetitive tasks to computers, and can allow us to be more creative.

It got me thinking bout all the ways the utility industry has been a benefactor of technology.  Reports, tracking data, mapping and work orders can all be computerized to permit easier development of operating information.  Water and wastewater plants run better, and more efficiently with technology like variable speed drives and control systems.  Of course they come with a cost – spending money to save money.  When the systems fail, well, that can be a problem.   Kinda like the last two weeks for me….

Take Meaning from Tragedy

July 31, 2012
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My apologies for the delay in posting as I have been traveling.  But on my mind has been the events of two Thursday night ago, which was truly tragic and horrendous.  We should send our thoughts, hopes and sympathies to the victims, their families and those who were terrorized in the theatre but escaped, uninjured physically.  No doubt the psychological effects will linger for all the survivors and many of their families.  May we all pull together to help these people as they will need us.  We should also commend all the first responders for their efforts, in a situation that is difficult for most to imagine.  Yet they were there, doing the job we expect public employees to do when they are needed.

No one expects events like this to happen to them.  There is no way to anticipate such events which makes the tragedy all the greater.  And in the aftermath of this horrific event, were a series of threats for similar actions.  But why does this happen?

In the developed world, most of us have access to good food, decent shelter, adequate clothing and access to affordable quality water and wastewater services, all the basic needs we have to survive.  Most of the infrastructure that support us, works well.  We have cars, decent education and ability pursue jobs we want and interests we have.  We may disagree over philosophies in a variety of areas, but most of the hot political issues of the day affect few of us directly and even fewer are life threatening. Sure there are ups and downs, but how does someone deem attacking innocent people in a theatre is reasonable action?

We are all people.  Regardless of our differences, solutions can only be achieved when we all pull together.  May this tragedy serves as a catalyst for us to start working together to solve our problems, all of our problems, to provide a better future.  What better way to pay tribute to all those caught up in that theatre tragedy in Aurora……