Water Utilities | Page 4 of 6 | Locus Technologies

EHS Digital Transformation: Managing Drinking Water Quality Data and Compliance: CCR in the Cloud

In most industrialized cities around the world, drinking water is readily available and safe. Safeguarding groundwater (aquifers), streams, rivers, reservoirs, and lakes is crucial to continue delivering clean water on the tap. So is testing and validated water quality data. There are several aspects of drinking water quality that is of concern in the United States, including Cryptosporidium, disinfection by-products, lead, perchlorates, and pharmaceutical substances.

Recent headlines about water quality issues in cities like Flint, Pittsburgh, Asheville, or Rome and Cape Town are motivating consumers to ask more questions about their water quality. Albuquerque’s groundwater is becoming seriously depleted; Fresno’s groundwater is highly susceptible to contamination; In Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Newark, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego and Washington, D.C., source water is threatened by runoff and industrial or sewage contamination; Water supplies in Baltimore, Fresno, Los Angeles, New Orleans, San Diego, and several other cities are vulnerable to agricultural pollution containing nitrogen, pesticides or sediment.

Locus Technologies IoT Monitoring. Connected at all times.

In most cities in the US, drinking water quality is in conformity with the norms of the Safe Drinking Water Act, which requires EPA to set Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCL) for potential pollutants. In addition, the EPA’s Consumer Confidence Report (CCR) Rule of 1998 requires most public water suppliers to provide consumer confidence reports, also known as annual water quality reports, to their customers. Each year by July 1 anyone connected to a public water system should receive in the mail an annual water quality report that tells where water in a specific locality comes from and what’s in it. Locus EIM automates this reporting and allows utilities to be transparent by publishing CCR online in real time so that consumers have access to their CCR at all times. Consumers can also find out about these local reports on a map provided by EPA.

Utilities must maintain good water quality records and manage them in a secure database with built-in alerts for any outliers so that responsible water quality managers can react quickly when there is exceedance of MCL or another regulatory limit.

Learn more about our water solutions.

A better way to manage all those ops readings

Manage all those ops readings without spreadsheets or paper forms

I am constantly reminded by the number of calls we receive, that no matter how robust a SCADA and HMI system is, there is always a requirement for in-field O&M verification and documentation. It’s almost universal, and spans a myriad of industries, large and small, the need to monitor and record thousands of periodic (daily/per shift/weekly, etc.) routine readings/recordings at a prescribed frequency often recorded on pen to paper field forms. The same processes sometimes use “template” spreadsheets for data collection that are then emailed/placed on shared file servers or otherwise sent to some central location for review and post processing. These processes are antiquated and subject to data quality and record keeping challenges.

It’s time for an upgrade!

Why simple form builders are not a good software solution for ops data

Electronic forms are great for collecting data and almost every business entity has built such forms in spreadsheets, word processing or simple databases to collect the information. In addition, there is a software category of form builders and they can certainly build forms. The question becomes is it a good fit so solve your business process issues?
Most customers have more sophisticated needs than simply collecting information on one or more custom forms – they want to do something with all the information collected far beyond what simple form builder tools can provide. Even customers with sophisticated spreadsheet forms, can’t manage them as they multiply exponentially or their Excel gurus retire.

Here are some examples of where you may require software tools beyond a simple form builder:

Collecting equipment readings on each shift at multiple locations and report the data to centralized management, who review the data, look for trends/ issues.
Verifying and validating data at the point of data entry to eliminate data entry errors.
Automatically visualizing (charts or tables) information in near real time to make operations decisions.
Sharing the information with others.
Scheduling activities related to periodic or infrequent data collection events.
Receiving notifications when actions are due.
Automatically creating regulatory reports in prescribed formats.
Creating complex work flows and audited approval processes.
Creating intelligent forms with calculations based on past data or other criteria

Forms with Benefits

Locus Platform is a configurable platform with standard applications that are easy to configure to customers unique requirements. One of its many strengths is its powerful form builder capable of creating simple or complex forms with simple or sophisticated logic. So for customers looking to move from paper and spreadsheet templates, it’s an excellent option to consider, especially if you require more than a simple “fill in the blank” form for transmittal using mobile devices. Best of all, the data are securely stored in a database structure for reporting and alternative business uses and analyses, compared to the almost impossible management of hundreds of spreadsheets or paper forms.

Here are some examples where sophisticated forms are integrated with a flexible database:

Water Utilities – Tracking chlorination and aerobic digestion processes with daily inputs/outputs with a monthly summary and chart, and tracking well production across well fields.
Water Utilities – Tracking periodic sewer discharges and water samples for permit compliance.
Agriculture – Monitoring food processing equipment for compliance with optimum equipment operating parameters for air permits.
Pharmaceutical/Chemical Manufacturing Facilities- Tracking EHS daily, weekly, monthly, etc. investigations and in-house audits.
Universities – tracking chemical inventories.
Facility Engineering – Documenting O&M activities for groundwater treatment systems.
Electric Utilities – Monitoring water/energy/gas usage from old style meters for sustainability reporting with data entry validation.
Refineries and Terminals – Collecting O&M, usage and wastewater data.

Locus Mobile integrates with Locus Platform

If you still rely on paper forms and template spreadsheets and are ready to streamline your process and enhance the value of your data, give us a call and we can show you a range of options that will retire the paper forms for good!

Locus announces EIM One — a new way to streamline environmental data management for projects of all sizes and needs

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 12 March 2019 — Locus Technologies, (Locus), the industry leader in EHS, sustainability, and environmental compliance management software, is pleased to announce EIM One is available today, enabling a range of affordable solutions to automate laboratory analytical testing, analytical data workflow process, and meet environmental information management and EHS compliance needs.

“EIM has been a market leader since its introduction in 1999, and has a long history meeting the environmental compliance needs at a wide range of complex, technically challenging sites and enterprise deployments. However, some projects need a simpler, focused solution to manage analytical data for small sites or drinking water utilities. It’s for these projects that EIM One was created. EIM One can be deployed on hours’ notice and used for routine data collection needs often handled by spreadsheets or paper forms,” said Wes Hawthorne, President of Locus.

With today’s current push towards digital transformation, many consultants, small firms, water utilities, and others are ready to finally move away from ad hoc data management approaches and adopt a more robust and formal software solution. However, it is important that the solution be configurable, scalable and right-sized for their needs today and be able to expand as their needs and businesses change.

EIM One takes advantage of Locus’ 20-year history of EHS software in the cloud and includes all the essentials for environmental and analytical data management in a modular and scalable package. This means customers can start with the essentials and add functionality when and if they need it. This approach allows Locus to offer a range of attractive pricing options. With the essential EIM One configuration, customers will be loading analytical laboratory data and producing reports in record time and taking advantage of market tested SaaS-based database design, configurability, security, and accessibility.

“EIM One is a great place to start if you’re new to digital transformation. We are excited to release EIM One and finally give customers the options they have been asking for and provide just the essentials they need so they can confidently start to digitally transform their older data management approaches at very affordable pricing” said Neno Duplan, Founder and CEO at Locus. “Today’s customer wants choice above all else, and EIM One gives them the options, including mobile, in a modern configurable SaaS solution.”

Tips for choosing a GIS application for your environmental database

You can turbocharge your water data management by including a geographical information system (GIS) in your toolkit! Your data analysis efficiency also gets a huge boost if your data management system includes a GIS system “out of the box” because you won’t have to manually transfer data to your GIS. All your data is seamlessly available in both systems.

Not all GIS packages are created equal, though. Here are some tips to consider when looking at mapping applications for your environmental data:

1) Confirm that integration is built-in and thorough

Mapping is easy when properly integrated with your environmental database. You should not need extra filters or add-on programs to visualize your data. Look for built-in availability of features, such as “click to map”, that take the guesswork and frustration out of mapping for meaningful results.

Good integration means mapping is as easy as clicking a “show on map” button. In Locus EIM, you can run a data query and click “Show results on map” icon, change the default settings if desired, and instantly launch a detailed map with a range of query layers to review all chemicals at the locations of interest.

All the query results are presented as query layers, so you can review the results in detail. This map was created with the easy “show results on map” functionality, which anyone can use with no training.

2) Check for formatting customization options

Look for easy editing tools to change the label colors, sizes, fonts, positioning, and symbols. Some map backgrounds make the default label styles hard to read and diminish the utility of the map, or if you’re displaying a large quantity of data, you’ll almost certainly need to tweak some display options to make these labels more readable.

Default label styles are legible on this background, but they are a bit hard to read.

A few simple updates to the font color, font sizes, label offset, and background color make for much easier reading. Changes are made via easy-to-use menus and are instantly updated on the map, so you have total control to make a perfectly labeled map.

3) Look for built-in contouring for quick assessment of the extent of the spatial impact

Contours can be a great way to visually interpret the movement of contaminants in groundwater and is a powerful visualization tool. In the example below, you can clearly see the direction the plume is heading and the source of the problem. An integrated GIS with a contouring engine lets you go straight from a data query to a contour map—without export to external contouring or mapping packages. This is great for quick assessments for your project team.

Contour maps make it easy to visualize the source and extent of the plumes. They can be easily created with environmental database management systems that include basic contouring functionality.

4) Look for something easy to use that doesn’t require staff with specialized mapping knowledge

Many companies use sophisticated and expensive mapping software for their needs. But the people running those systems are highly trained and often don’t have easy access to your environmental data. For routine data review and analysis, simple is better. Save the expensive, stand-alone GIS for wall-sized maps and complex regulatory reports.

Here is a simple map (which is saved, so anyone can run it) showing today’s chlorine data in a water distribution system. You don’t have to wait for the GIS department to create a map when you use a GIS that’s integrated with your environmental database system. When data are updated daily from field readings, these maps can be incredibly helpful for operational personnel.

Screenshot of Locus GIS location clustering functionality

See your data in new ways with Locus GIS for environmental management.
Locus offers integrated GIS/environmental data management solutions for organizations in many industries.
Find out more >

Taking the next steps

After viewing some of the many visualization possibilities in this blog, the next step is make some maps happen!

Make sure your environmental data system has integrated mapping options.
Make sure your sampling/evaluation/monitoring locations have a consistent set of coordinates. If you have a mixed bag of coordinate systems, you will need to standardize. Otherwise, your maps will not be meaningful. Here are some options to try, as well as some good resource sites:
- https://epsg.io/ (transformations)
- http://www.earthpoint.us/Convert.aspx (transformations)
Start with a few easy maps—and build from there.

Happy mapping!

Shape of Water: Cape Town running out of drinking water

The city cut daily water use limits first to 87 liters and then 50 in a bid to avert shutting off supplies.

The city had set a 50-liter daily limit and had told citizens “Day Zero” was approaching when people would have to queue at standpipes.
But water-saving efforts in the South African city have seen the day pushed back from April to 27 August. Seasonal rains should mean that date is now averted, the city said. The shortages follow three years of low rainfall. The city had resorted to increasingly drastic measures to clamp down on water usage, including “naming and shaming” the 100 addresses using the most water and fining residents who failed to comply with the 50 liters (13 gallons) limit per person.

By comparison, the average California consumer uses some 322 liters (85 gallons) of water per day. Water use in California was highest in the summer months of June through September, where it averaged 412 liters per person per day. By comparison, during the cooler and wetter months of January through March of 2016, average per capita water use was only 242 liters per person per day.

Although the risk that piped water supplies will be shut off this year has receded, politicians and environmentalists warn that the water crisis is there to stay in Cape Town, as year-on-year rainfall levels dwindle.

Rethinking Urban Water Management

Improved wastewater distribution and treatment technologies have largely eradicated once-common waterborne diseases.

Water supply and distribution were ranked as the fourth greatest engineering achievement of the 20^th century by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and rightfully so.

Developments in water management have drastically improved public health and safety. In the early 1900s, for example, dysentery and diarrhea, both waterborne diseases, were the third largest cause of death in the United States (Wulf, 2000).

Currently, incidences of waterborne diseases in the United States are minimal, thanks in large measure to improved water distribution and treatment technologies. Additionally, cities are now less susceptible to flooding due to the development and implementation of storm drain systems. The current paradigm in urban water management entails a centralized drinking water plant, connected to individual households through an underground network of pipes, and a sewer that carries the wastewater to a centralized treatment plant for further discharge into a natural water stream. This system has permitted significant progress in our society.

Our clean water supply and sanitation systems may be endangered

NAE also says that providing access to clean water is the fifth greatest challenge that we will face this century. Despite all its positive qualities, the urban water management paradigm has some serious limitations that are likely to get worse in the future due to increasing urban population, expansion of paved areas, scarcity of water, and climate change:

Reliance on large quantities of water
Centralized systems depend heavily on large quantities of water— an already scarce resource that will likely become even more so, with increasing population and climate change. Population growth also requires increasing the capacity of the water treatment plants and expanding the already-complex network of water lines.
More runoff
Fast-growing cities mean larger paved areas and, therefore, higher runoff during rain events. Runoff, which carries pollutants from the street surface, is difficult and expensive to contain and treat. Many cities— including some cities here in the San Francisco Bay Area— discharge their storm water runoff directly to the sea, with minimal treatment. If you live in the San Francisco Bay area, you may have noticed blue signs posted next to storm drains, which read “Drains to the Bay”. Runoff is expected to become an even bigger issue due to the variability in rainfall caused by climate change.
Expensive operation and maintenance
Extensive underground pipe networks for drinking and wastewater are expensive to operate and maintain. They make urban planning more difficult because pipe locations are not always known, and multiple independent agencies and companies run pipes and cables underground. Furthermore, the lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan, shows us that poorly maintained old pipes can present a serious public health issue.
Leaky pipes
An estimated 10 – 40% of the global urban water supply is lost due to leaky pipes, which are difficult and costly to repair (Larsen et al., 2016)..
Lost nutrients
Centralized water systems are not particularly efficient in recovering the nutrients that wastewater offers (i.e., nitrogen and phosphorous).

In search of a more sustainable solution

Centralized treatment plants have vastly improved public health, but perhaps a more decentralized urban water management system would address some of their shortcomings.

Across the country and the world, innovative teams have proposed and implemented multiple improvements and alternatives to the current urban water management paradigm. But there is still no widely-accepted solution to the current and future challenges in urban water management.

A real, sustainable solution would involve a combination of measures adapted to local needs. One promising approach to replace or supplement our current systems is to decentralize the management of urban water. This means treating the wastewater close to the source in small-scale treatment systems, instead of transporting it through a complex network of pipes to a centralized treatment plant. Decentralization offers a series of advantages— such as less reliance on pipes, easier coverage expansion in rapidly growing cities, lower variability in the loading of the treatment systems, and efficient utilization of the wastewater as a resource.

Decentralized systems, for example, offer the opportunity to separate blackwater (urine, faeces, flushwater), brownwater (faeces and flushwater), and greywater (water from washing food, clothes, and dishware, and from bathing)— which would be very complicated in a centralized system, due to the need to install separate pipelines for each.

Separating these sources makes wastewater treatment more efficient, as each of them require different extents of treatment. It also opens the possibility of water reuse. For example, greywater can easily be treated at a local scale and reused, therefore saving water and energy. Source separation also provides the opportunity to recover nutrients from human waste more efficiently. Urine, for example, contains a high concentration of nitrogen, which is lost as nitrogen gas in most centralized treatment plants. By separating the urine in a decentralized system, nitrogen could be recovered.

Nevertheless, decentralized systems have their own challenges. These include the complexity of operating, maintaining, and inspecting a network of treatment systems; the development of reliable and robust small-scale systems; and public acceptance. Decentralized urban water management is still in its early development, but it’s an idea that certainly deserves further consideration.

Why now?

Historically, major innovations in urban water management have been triggered by crises: the overpopulation of Ancient Rome led to the development of large scale water distribution systems; the cholera and typhoid fever outbreaks in Europe led to the development of disinfection; and the severe pollution of water stream led to development and implementation of wastewater treatment (Sedlak, 2014). With increasing world population, rapid urbanization, climate change, and a growing scarcity of resources, our current urban water management systems will be under increasingly significant stress. It is crucial to our health, our safety, and the overall well-being of our society that we anticipate the challenges and start innovating now.

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References
Hansen, R. D. (n.d.). Water and Wastewater Systems in Imperial Rome. [online] <Accessed 16 December 2016>

Larsen, T. A., Hoffmann, S., Lüthi, C., Truffer, B., Maurer, M. (2016). Emerging solutions to the water challenges of an urbanizing world. Science, 352 (6288), pp. 928-933.

National Academy of Engineering. (2008). Grand Challenges for Engineering. National Academy of Science.

San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. (n.d.). Only Drain Down the Rain. [online] <Accessed on 16 December 2016>

Sedlak, D. (2014). Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World’s Most Vital Resource. Yale University Press.

Tilley, E., Ulrich, L., Lüthi, C., Reymond, P., Schertenleib, R., Zurbrügg C. (2014). Compendium of Sanitation Systems and Technologies, 2nd Revised Edition. Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), Dübendorf.

Wulf, W. A. (2000). Great Achievements and Grand Challenges. The Bridge, 30 (3&4), pp. 5-10.

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Still looking for the right EHS software to revolutionize your environmental and compliance initiatives? Book a demo with us today!

About guest blogger— Victor Huanambal, Locus Technologies

Victor Huanambal has been working at Locus for close to two years as an environmental engineer. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2014.

At Locus, he is mostly involved in projects related to groundwater remediation, environmental compliance, and greenhouse gases verification.

San Jose Water Company selects Locus Platform for environmental compliance management

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 29 November 2016 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a leading provider of cloud-based software solutions to streamline EHS regulation and compliance management, has partnered with San Jose Water Company for an implementation of the Locus Platform.

San Jose Water Company is an investor-owned water utility that serves over one million people in the greater San Jose metropolitan area. San Jose Water Company has been a customer of Locus since 2014, and has been using Locus EIM and Locus Mobile for its drinking water compliance activities. After finding success with their EIM solution, San Jose Water Company is expanding its Locus usage to Locus Platform.

San Jose Water Company will take advantage of the flexibility of the Locus Platform to configure a range of environmental compliance apps for tracking and reporting water discharges and hazardous material inspections, helping Locus to further strengthen its position in the water utilities market. By choosing to build most of their applications themselves, San Jose is taking advantage of Locus Platform’s easy-to-use configuration workbench to create unique and effective solutions. They will be able to use Locus Platform to support compliance with EPA’s Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).

In addition to tracking discharges and inspections, San Jose Water Company will use Locus Platform’s capabilities for reminders and checklists associated with other compliance requirements. They will also take advantage of Locus Platform’s built-in mobile features to enable their custom apps and streamline data collection throughout their various departments.

Locus Platform’s configurable solution will replace a range of self-built spreadsheet solutions and consolidate the water utility’s environmental compliance in one application. With the built-in configuration flexibility, San Jose Water Company’s Locus Platform will be able to grow and change as new regulatory requirements arise.

“Our recent successes in deploying our software solutions to customers in the water utility industry proves their versatile nature. San Jose Water Company needed a data management system that was tailored to their specific business practices. The Locus Platform allows for full configurability of its data collection tools, workflows, and outputs. By using these tools, the software solution fits the business— not the other way around.” said J. Wesley Hawthorne, President of Locus Technologies. “They were also impressed with their ability to self-configure and manage their own applications, which allows them to add new applications as their needs change.”

ABOUT SAN JOSE WATER COMPANY
San Jose Water Company (SJWC), a wholly owned subsidiary of SJW Group and founded in 1866, is an investor-owned water company headquartered in San Jose and is one of the largest and most technically sophisticated urban water system in the United States. SJWC serves over 1 million people in the greater San Jose metropolitan area comprising about 138 square miles. The utility delivers safe, high quality, and reliable water and exceptional customer service.

Cortina Rancheria selects Locus Technologies’ EIM for its water quality and environmental management system software

The Locus EIM SaaS will streamline the Cortina Rancheria environmental monitoring program under U.S. EPA Clean Water Act

San Francisco, Calif., 1 November 2016 — Locus Technologies, a leader in environmental and compliance enterprise management software, announced today that the Cortina Rancheria Kletsel Dehe Band of Wintun Indians (Cortina Rancheria) has selected Locus EIM as its environmental information management system.

Cortina Rancheria is implementing the Locus EIM SaaS-based software to manage their environmental monitoring under the U.S. EPA Clean Water Act. Locus EIM will enable the tribe to consolidate and better manage its field, water quality, and air monitoring data, with output reporting to the EPA WQX database.

Locus EIM is a comprehensive environmental data management system designed for the variety and complexity of environmental sampling and analysis. EIM has all the built-in tools necessary for any environmental media sampling event, and it includes a powerful, integrated mobile application to streamline data acquisition. With built-in sample planning, laboratory data upload, and a wide range of reporting and visualization tools, EIM is a complete solution for any environmental monitoring and reporting need and an excellent fit for natural resources monitoring.

“As the U.S. EPA recently approved the Cortina Rancheria Kletsel Dehe Band of Wintun Indians’ right to develop tribal water quality standards, the timing for EIM implementation is perfect. Their use of EIM will help achieve their environmental stewardship goals by providing them the software tools to efficiently manage their water quality and tribal resources” said Wes Hawthorne, President of Locus. “Our EIM software will also support their need to upload data to the EPA’s systems in a timely and efficient manner”.

ABOUT CORTINA INDIAN RANCHERIA
Cortina Rancheria is a federally recognized tribe, enacted in 1907 by order of the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. The Tribe has a formally adopted constitution and is governed by a duly elected five (5) member Tribal Council, overseen by the General Council. The Rancheria is located approximately seventeen (17) miles southeast of Williams, CA at the base of the Western Foothills. The Rancheria consists of 640 acres of sovereign land and resources and has over 200 Tribal members.

Making water quality data more transparent: Lessons from an annual water quality report

A few weeks ago, I received my water bill in the mail, right on schedule. But this time, it came with a glossy pamphlet containing the annual water quality report. Normally I just toss it into the trash unread. It’s full of small print and lots of numbers, and I was never that concerned about our water quality.

I live in the NC mountains, where the water comes from “pristine mountain springs and streams”. And having grown up in New Orleans— spending 21 years drinking water from the polluted tail end of the Mississippi River— I figured any damage was already done. (But that New Orleans water sure was tasty!)

This time, though, I actually read the entire report. I’d heard about recent water issues in Flint, MI, and other cities, and I do have children who drink the water here. So I looked at this City of Asheville water quality report in detail, and here’s what I discovered.

The report contains a lot of rather informative text about how the City of Asheville treats its water and what possible risks could be present from various contaminants. The centerpiece of the report is a table that lists detected substances in the water. In 2015, 13 substances were detected out of 150 substances sampled for, and those 13 were “well within safe levels”. That sounded good. But then I started looking at the report and wondering about certain things…

Let’s start with lead. The report has this:

City of Asheville water quality report- lead measurements

City of Asheville’s 2015 Water Quality Report: Lead, ppb

The “Highest Level Allowed” (the maximum contaminant level, or MCL) is 15 parts per billion (ppb). I did some searching and found a good article explaining lead sampling in water. If over 10% of tests come back over that level of 15 ppb, then the water utility must warn residents.

Asheville seems to have passed this test (only one sample exceeded the action level). However, the article mentioned above also describes how the tests for Flint, MI had possible problems because the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality threw out two samples. With those samples included, the number of samples over the limit would have exceeded 10%, and water customers would have received a much earlier warning of possible lead issues.

So, back to Asheville. Were any samples thrown out— and if so, why? That information is not in the report.

Let’s take one more example: hexavalent chromium. Here is the City of Asheville report:

City of Asheville water quality report- hexavalent chromium measurements

City of Asheville’s 2015 Water Quality Report: Hexavalent Chromium, ppb

So, the average hexavalent chromium level in the water is 0.05 ppb. But there is no action level given, and the EPA definition text says nothing about any possible side effects. Through more searching, I learned that although hexavalent chromium is a carcinogen, the US EPA does not have a maximum contaminant level (MCL) for this compound.

California has a public health goal of 0.02 ppb, but North Carolina has a public health goal of 0.07 ppb. So, how would I interpret the Asheville value of 0.05 that falls in the middle of those two numbers? At least the report provides the detected range (ND – 0.08), so the maximum level in any sample was only a bit higher than the 0.07 level.

These two examples are not meant to disparage Asheville’s Annual Water Quality Report— it is a great way to deliver some basic information to water users. But for motivated water users, the report will lead to other questions— to answer these questions would require more context or a deeper dive into the actual data. Also, while I’m personally fairly tech-savvy and scientifically literate, many water users may lack the numerical and verbal literacy skills needed to understand the report.

For some closing thoughts:

How can water utilities make their sample data more transparent and available to users who want to take the “deeper dive”? How can users learn about sampling processes and decisions made— for example, “were any lead samples rejected, and why?”
How do users evaluate risks from compounds without EPA maximum contaminant levels, especially when states and regulators have conflicting levels?
How do water utilities present trend information and changes in water quality procedures over time? The 2015 report only shows data from that year. I dug up some older reports and found that hexavalent chromium was not detected at all in 2014. So what caused the detects in 2015? Also, lead was sampled at 100 sites in 2014, but only 50 sites in 2015. Why was the number of samples cut in half?
How do you balance presenting too much information to the public (causing information overload) with presenting too little (causing users to be uninformed about quality issues)? Is there a way to show key information, but let users drill down into actual sampling data results for further details?
As a follow up to that last question— if you allow public access to sampling data, how do you ensure customers can interpret that data correctly, if those customers lack knowledge of sampling processes and any statistical techniques used?
Can the power of the internet be harnessed to distribute this data and make it understandable to customers? Are there tools that customers can use to explore the data on their own and see key findings and trends? I could not find anything online for Asheville.
Finally, given that a certain level of technical understanding is needed to read the Annual Report and explore any actual data— do we need a neutral party to serve as interpreter and interlocutor for the public when dealing with water utilities? Who would play that role?

Other Locus contributors will explore some of these issues in future posts. In the meantime, please share your own thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.

About guest blogger— Dr. Todd Pierce, Locus Technologies

Dr. Pierce manages a team of programmers tasked with development and implementation of Locus’ EIM application, which lets users manage their environmental data in the cloud using Software-as-a-Service technology. Dr. Pierce is also directly responsible for research and development of Locus’ GIS (geographic information systems) and visualization tools for mapping analytical and subsurface data.

Water Lead Contamination—From Rome to Flint

By now, the public health emergency resulting from lead-contaminated water in Flint, Mich., has been made abundantly clear.

The city changed its water source from the Detroit system to the Flint River in April 2014 as a cost-saving measure, exposing its residents to untreated water replete with lead leached from aging pipes. Last September, a local health center found that the proportion of children with elevated lead levels in their blood had nearly doubled since the switch was made. As attention grew around the issue, so too did the public alarm — with good reason. Photos showed Flint residents standing in long lines to collect bottled water and get their children’s blood tested, or standing in court calling for compensation.

And then there were the photos of people holding up samples of the water that had come out of their taps for more than a year. The liquid appears a translucent yellow-brown instead of colorless and clear; if images could emit an odor, these would be foul. But the truly terrifying fact about the water crisis in Flint is invisible. It is the insidious effect of growing up or growing old while unknowingly allowing lead into your bloodstream. According to the World Health Organization, lead creates developmental and behavioral issues in children that are believed to be irreversible.

Water lead poisoning has occurred not just in Flint but all over the country, for decades — and not only from water, but (primarily) from the paint that colors old homes.

On the federal level, there is no comprehensive understanding of the extent to which the population is being exposed to hazardous amounts of lead. Why? Because there is no federal or even state water quality database which public or impacted communities could mine for information. There is a better way. EPA and other agencies responsible for water quality must move into a new century and install a centralized, web-based water quality database where all testing results they collect from various reporting entities should be stored and make accessible in real-time to the general public. That type of transparency is the only way to avoid another Flint. The technology exists but political will may not be there yet.

Flint may have in recent months become synonymous with lead contamination in America, but it is by no means the only — or the most extreme — example of how the toxic element can make its way into our bodies.

Some historians argue that the lead poisoning contributed to the decline of the Roman empire. A team of archaeologists and scientists has recently discovered just how contaminated Roman tap water was. The team dredged sediment downstream from Rome in the harbor basin at Portus, a maritime port of imperial Rome, and from a channel connecting the port to the Tiber River. The researchers compared the lead isotopes in their sediment samples with those found in preserved Roman piping to create a historical record of lead pollution flowing from the Roman capital. Tap water from ancient Rome likely contained up to 100 times more lead than local spring water.

How come that 2000 years later we have still not learned the lesson?