How SRP’s Infrastructure Became a Public Relations Tool
The Salt River Project (SRP) is a major utility that providesboth electrical power and water to a combined count of a littleover a million customers in the Phoenix, Arizona, region. SRPmanages 131miles of Bureau of Reclamation–owned major canalsand more than 1,000miles of laterals. This infrastructure—whichtraverses heavily populated urban areas—provides an unexpectedresource for public relations. SRP […]
Learning From Oroville: HDR’s Dam Inspection Program
In February 2017, the service spillway of California’s Oroville Dam was damaged, resulting in an emergency that required the temporary evacuation of 188,000 people downstream. While the danger was contained and the spillway was reconstructed the following year, the Oroville incident was serious enough to provoke a thorough rethink of dam maintenance and inspection practices […]
The ASDSO: Advocating for Dam Safety Nationwide
The Association of State Dam Safety Officials (ASDSO) was founded in 1984 after a string of high-profile dam failures to aid each state in improving its dam safety regulatory program. Since then, it has helped state dam safety agencies communicate with one another and adopt best practices, conducted training, and engaged in awareness raising and […]
Modernizing Oregon’s Dam Safety Statutes
In 1928, the St. Francis Dam in California failed, resulting in the loss of hundreds of lives and the passage of dam safety laws in several states, including Oregon. Over the years, however, the resources dedicated to dam safety have been limited, and challenges in ensuring their safety remain. Engineering standards have evolved over time, […]
Creating Consensus on Oregon’s Mid-Coast
The Mid-Coast region of Oregon is surprisingly complex in its hydrology. It contains eight hydrological basins, each with its own population demographics, water supply, and water needs. In this sense, the mid-coast is a microcosm of Oregon as a whole, which is also a climatically and geographically diverse state. In recognition of this fact, the […]
How Seal Rock Water District Is Planning for Resilience
Seal Rock Water District (SRWD) provides water to several thousand yearly and seasonal residents of the Oregon coast. With a newly installed smart water grid, it is a technologically advanced district that has sharply reduced water waste and demand. Moreover, SRWD is thinking about the future. As it builds a new water intake to increase […]
Congress’s Role in Funding Water Infrastructure
Our public infrastructure has been in disrepair for far too long. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, our nation’s roads, highways, bridges, railways, airports, and water systems will require $4.6 trillion in investments before 2025. However, current funding levels are falling short of our infrastructure needs, and there will be an estimated $2 […]
Dean Sawyer: Averting Disaster and Guaranteeing Newport’s Future
Newport, Oregon, is a thriving city of 10,000 on the Oregon coast that is popular with tourists and home to many businesses and organizations. However, the city faces an existential threat. Its two aging dams would not survive a moderately sized earthquake and suffer from seepage issues. A dam breach would cause loss of life […]
AECOM’s Holistic Solutions to Cities’ Water, Waste, and Energy Problems
AECOM is one of the largest consulting companies in the world, and works with major companies and municipalities to design, finance, build, and operate transportation, water, and energy infrastructure. Its immense spectrum of activities means that it can often find innovative solutions to big problems by integrating solutions from a number of its divisions. For […]
Implementing Oceanus’s Pumped Storage- Desal Plant in Chile
Desalination plants typically deal with two major problems: the desalination process requires a large amount of energy, and it results in a large amount of brine, which is difficult to dispose of safely. Oceanus Power & Water has come up with an innovative solution to this problem: combining a pumped storage facility, which stores power […]