John Verduin: Bringing People and Ideas Together at Anchor QEA
Working with varied stakeholders on complicated issues to produce innovative, effective solutions is a considerable challenge, particularly for water-related issues. But John Verduin has made a career of doing exactly that, particularly in his current role as managing partner of Anchor QEA, a company that uses innovation and collaboration to solve complex environmental and water […]
Volume 8 Issue 6 June 2021
Storm Water Management By Kris Polly Storm water management is a constant concern for municipalities. Sudden influxes of water, often bringing pollutants of various sorts, can overflow systems, challenge treatment infrastructure, and affect the environment. Luckily, municipal water professionals are working to design ever better systems, develop innovative mitigation technologies, and find funds to improve […]
Dig Deep Research: Helping Municipalities Follow the Money for Infrastructure
Grants are vital tools for maintaining and upgrading water infrastructure, but they can be hard to locate and difficult to win. The decentralized nature of information on available grants means that municipal water providers often miss opportunities. To solve this problem, Tia Cavender and Fernando Gonzalez of Dig Deep Research set out to provide a […]
Sergie Albino of ecoSPEARS: Fighting Environmental Contamination With Advanced Technology
Sergie Albino’s career has truly gone to the moon and back. After helping NASA with its effort to search for water on the moon, he wanted to find ways to improve the water on Earth. With that in mind, he started ecoSPEARS, a company that has developed technologies to clean up environmental contamination. These include […]
Melanie McClare: Working Smarter With Wastewater at Swirltex
Innovation can take many forms, and these can include making existing technology work better and more efficiently. Swirltex is committed to doing exactly that. The company produces custom, modular wastewater treatment systems that use buoyancy-based membrane filtration to more efficiently separate solids and liquids, producing higher-quality effluent and better production rates while requiring less energy. […]
Bryan Eagle of Glanris: Turning Ag Waste into Sustainable Filtration Media
Reducing and reusing waste material are important conservation issues for both the water and the food industries. Bryan Eagle cofounded Glanris to develop a new technology that employs discarded rice hulls to create a filter material that can remove metals and organic material from water systems, all without any plastic or artificial components and with […]
Craig Milne: How Robots Can Improve Data Collection and Safety
The evolution of robotics is continually opening more places for exploration, research, and productivity. These can include places that would be dangerous for people to interact with in person, but that robots can reach while controlled from a safe distance. Robots can collect accurate scientific or engineering data, repair or modify existing systems, and even […]
Coachella Valley Water District: Making Water Work for Families, Farmers, and Golfers
Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD), formed in 1918, protects and conserves local water sources across a vast region in Southern California. CVWD has grown into a multifaceted agency that delivers irrigation and domestic water, collects and recycles wastewater, provides regional storm water protection, replenishes the groundwater basin, and promotes water conservation to sustain the region’s […]
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Peter A. DeFazio on Federal Assistance for Wastewater Infrastructure
Congressman Peter A. DeFazio has represented Oregon’s 4th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1986. He has served as the chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure since 2019 and before that had been its ranking member since 2015. In this interview, Chair DeFazio tells Municipal Water Leader about his […]
Volume 8 Issue 5 May 2021
Forging the Future Through Policy and Innovation By Kris Polly This month, we have the pleasure of featuring Congressman Peter A. DeFazio, the chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Chair DeFazio tells us about his commitment to federal funding for smarter, safer, greener, and more resilient infrastructure and explains the importance of […]