Global Water Resources

Source: Technology Digital

Date :04/01/2008 11:44:24

Environmental principles and the latest technology are helping an Arizonan private water utility company meet the challenges of a drier climate with a unique approach

Written by David Hughes and Produced by Jon Ellingwood

Some places have the odds stacked against them. Take Arizona, for example. Last year it overtook Nevada as the fastest-growing state in the US, increasing in population size by 3.6 percent, well over 200,000 people. Located in the American Southwest, it is also one of the driest: with just seven inches of rainfall in an average year, large areas have also suffered drought conditions for more than a decade.

On the plus side Arizona is fortunate in that the great Colorado River runs through its northern half and it is blessed with large aquifers, water that has gathered underground over the course of ages. But the Colorado isn’t running as high as it used to and the aquifers are a finite resource at the current rate of consumption.

Water scarcity is a problem but it is not insurmountable given a little lateral thinking and the application of the ‘Three Rs’ of environmental conservation: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. This is the philosophy that informs the way private water utility company Global Water Resources does business.

“Our business plan is to sell as little as possible,” says President, CEO and founder of the company Trevor Hill. “It’s controversial in this rather traditional sector, but we have set out to build a utility that is designed to conserve as much as possible in an area with known water scarcity. This is going to be a major issue and not just in the Southwest.”

Hill has experienced both surfeits and deficits of water personally, having been a marine systems officer in the Canadian Navy and also serving in the first Gulf War.

“I spent a lot of time in the Middle East making water available for the troops and the people and it was there I realized that water security was going to become a big first world issue.”

After retiring from the Navy then working first to design water utility systems, in 2003 he took the plunge into running his own utility company and founded Global Water Resources.

Says Hill: “I fundamentally believe that the solution to water scarcity lies not in supply-side management, by going out and finding new sources of water, but in demand-side management, stretching water use. This is not a new concept but it is new to the water industry.”

Reducing

In practice this means helping customers to use less water: messages are sent out loud and clear, for example about turning off the tap when teeth-brushing. One of the most effective ways of cutting consumption is through the installation of a water meter so that people actually see on their bills how much water they use. In June the company launched new customer care kiosks, located in the Global Water Center in Maricopa City, the first green commercial building in Arizona. In the kiosks, customers can pay their bills and also check on their own water use, compare to their neighbors, to others on their block or in the city.

“This is very much part of our outreach and educational policy,” says Hill. “This is a live issue that people care very much about, moms and kids in particular, and allowing people to compare their water use really adds some peer pressure. There is no penalty – there doesn’t need to be. Besides where we operate, it’s a private monopoly so people haven’t got a choice. It is a core part of our philosophy to educate our customers and to glorify water conservation.”

Reusing and Recycling

A major part of the Global business model is to only treat water intended for potable consumption to potable standards. Treating all water to potable standards can be expensive and wasteful of energy.

“We turn sewage into Perrier,” says Hill. “A lot of the time non-potable water can be redistributed to other uses – there’s no end of demand for non-potable water, irrigating crops and public areas, toilet flushing or car washing, for example. In fact the demand for potable water is relatively low by comparison.”

The communities where Global operates are either already double-plumbed or in the process of it, meaning that a second supply of reclaimed water will be available to all. It is not an issue without its controversies, as people are still learning to trust in recycled water.

Capital expenditure in the form of a second pipe network is somewhat greater but because far less water needs to be treated to the highest levels of purity, operational costs are also greatly reduced.

“All other water utility companies currently treat all their water to potable standards. Why, when you don’t drink all of it?”

Hill continues: “Our model also allows communities to accommodate the people moving in. At the moment it’s reckoned that an average home requires 0.5 acre/foot of water per year. [An acre/foot is volume of water covering an acre, 44,000sq ft, to the depth of one foot, or nearly 326,000 gallons.] We can reduce that to 0.2 acre/foot. Put another way, under standard calculations you need 50 acre/feet per year to supply 100 homes: using our system the same amount of water will allow you to build 250 homes.”

Public Private Partnerships

Global Water Resources builds its business by acquiring local utility companies, both water supply and waste treatment firms. It is also a keen participant in Public Private Partnership (PPP) agreements with communities, by which it supplies investment in infrastructure in return for shared management of water resources and a financial consideration.

“These deals allow us to expand our territories and also implement our business model,” says Hill, “and we bring to these towns capital, expertise and a solution to the problems of providing a sustainable and stable water supply that is popular with the local people. They instantly understand what it is we are trying to do; policy makers sometimes are a little behind them.”

The plan is working well. Hill estimates the company’s turnover will reach about $30 million in 2007, representing a growth rate of more than 25 percent, with the prospects for 2008 even more impressive with growth of between 30 and 50 percent expected.

Challenging Orthodoxy

While Hill freely admits that many of the ideas that form the basis of his business are not new, their application to the water industry is. In fact they are so radical that he hires employees from outside the sector.

He says: “I want engineers who will challenge orthodoxy and think creatively: the company’s intellectual property is not in the basic idea but in the methods and practices we use. We employ about 110 people, of which two thirds are engaged in the day-to-day running of the business. The rest are involved in research and development and the growth of the enterprise…there is no lack of cool technologies.”

The reason the company can operate with so few people is precisely because of its reliance on innovative technology.

For example this year it has installed GIS system mapping to its network, which combined with sensors throughout its network allows the company to isolate any problems in the network from headquarters and then send people straight to the trouble spot to fix it. Utility companies without this technology have to search the network manually.

Water meters are read remotely six times a day, meaning that if there is an unusual pattern of water use, the company is able to check with the customer or send round an engineer quickly to perform a check.

Leakage is an ever-present part of water supply operations but in this sensitive environment Global has cut it to an enviable five percent and falling through its proactive technological approach.

Another neat idea is Plant 4D, which is a 3D graphic representation of Global’s facilities. Each piece of equipment in the facility is recorded on the system, its reference number and manual stored in a database. “If a pump fails, we can immediately bring up all its details and the necessary diagnostics on the system,” says Hill. “And it means that we can revert to condition-based maintenance based on the actual situation, rather than rely on more wasteful time-based maintenance.”

This is one of the many examples where lean practices relying on technology and its intelligent application is allowing a company based firmly on green principles to operate in a commercial environment.

“Some people think it’s a kind of alchemy,” says Hill, “but I think we are proving that using green practices just equates to good business.”