Black & Veatch (United Kingdom)

Reverse osmosis concentrate may contain biological contaminants that pose a risk to human health.

A stakeholder structured engagement process at the Sustainable Water Infrastructure Management (SWIM) conference and workshop was held in December 2024. The participants identified critical current and future issues facing the water sector that are synthesized in this paper. In particular, they highlighted issues of water systems’ vulnerability and lack of resilience to hazards and stressors; inequities associated with water scarcity; and water quality problems – all affected by natural or man-made influences. The Smart One Water (S1W) vision was the baseline for the SWIM 2024 conference. This paper expands the S1W vision with a synthesis of the conference discussions about S1W-related fundamental concepts, practices and implementation barriers. It includes initial recommendations – based on a digital, data-focused, stakeholder-driven approach – with expert representatives of the public and private water supply sectors, academia, government and policymakers tasked to generate real-world adaptable ideas and practical solutions. Specifically, S1W envisions a future where water management and governance silos are eliminated to provide the necessary collaboration to enable efficient, resilient, affordable and equitable water access capable of adapting to a changing environment. This would be a future where communities govern collaboratively through integrated decision-making on policy, management and funding of natural and engineered water systems at the river basin scale.

The North American commercial electric vehicle (EV) sector is undergoing rapid expansion, with unit sales rising from 21, 120 in 2022 to 36,491 in 2023 - a 73% increase, according to the International Energy Agency. However, this accelerating adoption brings emerging technical challenges. One critical concern is the impact of low to extreme winter temperatures ($25^{\circ} \mathrm{F}$ to $-25^{\circ} \mathrm{F}$) on EV performance, including reduced energy efficiency and extended charging times. This paper presents a systematic analysis of commercial EV performance degradation under cold weather conditions and its broader implications on grid operations. Monte Carlo simulations, applied using real-world fleet parameters, indicate that at least $20 \%$ additional daily energy may be required in the U.S. alone to offset efficiency losses during severe cold weather events. The resulting strain on an already stressed winter grid could exacerbate reliability risks. Moreover, increased harmonic distortion associated with cold weather charging behaviors has also been observed, raising concerns about power quality. To address these challenges, this study proposes two practical mitigation strategies: (1) a ‘design-integrated safety’ based containerized battery swapping station model operating in a thermally controlled environment, and (2) a hybrid charging architecture combining on-route fast charging stops with depotbased overnight deep charging to support continuous fleet utilization without compromising range. Together, these interventions provide a robust foundation for resilient commercial EV integration in cold climates, supporting fleet operators and utilities in managing seasonal performance variability.

The Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) sponsored a Water Research Foundation (WRF) project to update and expand the findings of WRF #4034 to quantify the impact of condition assessment programs and technology implementation on failure/deterioration rates of Prestressed Concrete Cylinder Pipe (PCCP) since WRF #4034. The research project also aimed to collect successful transmission main program approaches to develop a road map for large-diameter, linear asset management programs. A key component of this research reviewed lessons learned to compare to guide other large-diameter pipeline owners. The outcome of the project is a guidance document that will enable utility managers to review a standard approach and assess other owners’ approaches to determine best practices for managing their large-diameter pressure pipe inventory. The project included interviews with several utilities considered to be the pioneers of PCCP management programs to understand the best practices for management of PCCP and lessons learned over many years of implementation.

The modernization of power systems, including the adoption of distributed energy resources (DERs), cloud-integrated substations, and electric vehicle infrastructure, has introduced significant cybersecurity challenges. Conventional perimeterfocused se

In any large-diameter condition assessment project, significant hurdles will need to be addressed for a successful project. Some of those hurdles are unique to each project, but many of them are common among condition assessment projects. Drawing on previous experience with these projects, here are a few of the most frequent hurdles that one may encounter and need to be addressed for a successful project. These hurdles include Safety, Budget, Isolation Issues, Drawing Completeness, Pipeline Design, Operational Impacts, Assessment Tooling Selection, City and/or Contractor Support, Public Outreach, and Stakeholder consideration.

Phoenix embarked on a major potable water transmission project in 2018 that included over 15 mi of 42″−66″ pipelines, three new booster pump stations along with numerous system interconnections and pressure reducing stations. At the beginning of the project, the City selected a program manager, engineers, and construction manager at risk (CMAR) contractors for each project component. This proved beneficial especially for the Segment 1–66″ pipeline portion of the project. Segment 1 is located along a major north south corridor in the center of the City’s water service area, including through a mountain preserve, next to a dam, sensitive neighborhoods, along and under a state highway. In addition to COVID, supply chain issues, and cost escalation, the City and its team overcame numerous other challenges, including neighborhood opposition at the initial stages of the project, numerous jurisdictional washes within the alignment, designing, and building a pipeline in a 40′ wide corridor with a steep slope up to homes with backyard pools on one side of the corridor and a 20′ tall highway sound and retaining wall on the downslope side. To avoid going under a 30′ long 20′ deep storm drain drop section and other critical transmission pipelines next to the highway wall, the team came up with a plan to use an existing planter space between the drop section and the wall to route the pipe above grade, protected with concrete encasement. The encasement is screened by a wall matching what was once a planter. Low water use cactus and shrubs were placed in the planter to return area to its planter aesthetics. Within the mountain preserve, the depth to rock is between 3 and 4 ft and testing showed it to have an unconfined compressive strength from 3,000 to 20,000 psi. Due to the fact that there is a major Corps of Engineers flood control dam in the preserve, blasting for trenching was not allowed. The engineers and CMAR worked together to understand the trenching conditions including completing rock coring and testing as well as test excavations with various excavation methods and equipment. In addition to the presence of hard rock, testing and geologic observations showed the rock to be tilted with variable depth particularly along the location where the pipeline needed to cross under the freeway. This required the team to conduct additional investigations, included drilling a boring in the middle of the freeway at night and implementing additional monitoring of the tunnel boring machine excavation under the freeway during construction. This presentation will describe the challenges and how the City and its engineer and CMAR team worked through them resulting in a successful project meeting the Water Services Department’s goals.

The water sector is in the middle of a paradigm shift from focusing on treatment and meeting discharge permit limits to integrated operation that also enables a circular water economy via water reuse, resource recovery, and system level planning and operation. While the sector has gone through different stages of such revolution, from improving energy efficiency to recovering renewable energy and resources, when it comes to the next step of achieving carbon neutrality or negative emission, it falls behind other infrastructure sectors such as energy and transportation. The water sector carries tremendous potential to decarbonize, from technological advancements, to operational optimization, to policy and behavioural changes. This book aims to fill an important gap for different stakeholders to gain knowledge and skills in this area and equip the water community to further decarbonize the industry and build a carbon-free society and economy. The book goes beyond technology overviews, rather it aims to provide a system level blueprint for decarbonization. It can be a reference book and textbook for graduate students, researchers, practitioners, consultants and policy makers, and it will provide practical guidance for stakeholders to analyse and implement decarbonization measures in their professions. English edition available https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book/843/Pathways-to-Water-Sector-Decarbonization-Carbon

The water sector is in the middle of a paradigm shift from focusing on treatment and meeting discharge permit limits to integrated operation that also enables a circular water economy via water reuse, resource recovery, and system level planning and operation. While the sector has gone through different stages of such revolution, from improving energy efficiency to recovering renewable energy and resources, when it comes to the next step of achieving carbon neutrality or negative emission, it falls behind other infrastructure sectors such as energy and transportation. The water sector carries tremendous potential to decarbonize, from technological advancements, to operational optimization, to policy and behavioural changes.This book aims to fill an important gap for different stakeholders to gain knowledge and skills in this area and equip the water community to further decarbonize the industry and build a carbon-free society and economy. The book goes beyond technology overviews, rather it aims to provide a system level blueprint for decarbonization. It can be a reference book and textbook for graduate students, researchers, practitioners, consultants and policy makers, and it will provide practical guidance for stakeholders to analyse and implement decarbonization measures in their professions.English edition available https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book/843/Pathways-to-Water-Sector-Decarbonization-Carbon