Xylem – Value of Water

Xylem, a global water technology company, has released their 2012 Value of Water Index and Report, and included a great presentation to display findings, based on a nation-wide poll of American voters about what they believe should be done in response to the country’s water crisis and who should pay for it. The study found [...]

Energy/Water Nexus

The University of Texas in Austin released a new report, entitled “Evaluating the Energy Consumed for Water Use in the United States”. It reveals that in 2010, 12.6 percent of the nation’s energy consumption was required to capture, move, prepare and treat water for the country’s needs. The report used data from EPRI, the US [...]

Food for Thought

There’s no better time than now for the American public to appreciate the “water-energy-food nexus,” or as I like to call it, the “liquid triangle of life”. To farmers across the U.S., particularly the Midwest, it’s painfully obvious: The historic drought, sweeping across the land like a silent tsunami, is wreaking economic, environmental, and emotional [...]

Manmade Waterways Could Be Harnessed for Power Generation

Aiding President Obama’s initiative to generate 80 percent of U.S. power from clean energy sources by 2035, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation released a study, Hydropower Resource Assessment at Existing Reclamation Facilities, on the hydroelectric power generation potential of 530 of its federally-owned waterways (dams, canals, pipelines, and irrigation tunnels). As the largest [...]

Water Tower Power

New York City is beginning a new form of energy generation: water towers. Frank Zammataro, president of Rentricity, has developed a turbine system to harness the pressure differentials in a water tower in water utilities to create power from previously wasted energy.  When water is drawn from a water tower, the gravity of the water [...]

California Water Agencies Going Solar

It was announced this week that four California water agencies and treatment facilities have installed solar power equipment from SunPower. The City of Galt’s Wastewater Treatment Plant, the Castaic Lake Water Agency’s Rio Vista Water Treatment Plant, the Rancho California Water District’s headquarters, and Riverside’s Sengal Dohety Pump Station have all installed systems that will [...]

Treatment Plant Powered by Floating Solar

With so much of the Earth’s surface covered by water, it only makes sense to utilize this surface for the production of solar electricity. Last month New Jersey American Water announced the completion of a floating 538 solar module array near its Canoe Brook Water Treatment Plant in Millburn, N.J. It is the first solar [...]

New York City Turns Wastewater into Energy

Every city in the U.S. has to deal with wastewater created by homes and businesses. But one of the biggest cities in the nation wants to put its wastewater to good use as a source of clean energy. New York City’s 8 million residents contribute 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater a day and the City’s [...]

Guest Article: Water and Energy – Inseparable Issues

Water is mankind’s most precious resource. There are no substitutes and the struggle to control water resources has shaped human history. “The human right to water is indispensable for leading a healthy life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite to the realization of all other human rights” (UN, 2002). Water security is a growing [...]

Guest Article: Alternative Energy and the Future of Water Supply

(Written by Daniel B. Botkin, Professor Emeritus, Environmental Studies and Biological Sciences, UC Santa Barbara) In addition to all the other demands on our water resources, energy supplies in the future could exert major new impacts, so far little talked about. Hydroelectric power, biofuels, nuclear power, coal, solar, and wind all place very different demands [...]