Volume 12 Issue 2 February

Infrastructure and Tech

By Kris Polly

The Fryingpan-Arkansas (Fry-Ark) Project is the sort of impressive infrastructure project, built on a heroic scale, for which the Bureau of Reclamation is so well known. Bringing water from the Colorado basin through a series of tunnels to the east side of the Continental Divide, it provides high-quality water to users in southeastern Colorado. While the Fry‑Ark Project was built mostly between 1962 and 1990, one element is yet to be completed: the Arkansas Valley Conduit (AVC). In our cover interview, Bill Long, the president of the board of the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, tells us about the importance of the AVC and its current status.

Next, we take a thorough look at the Lewis & Clark Regional Water System, a multistate agency that provides water to 20 member cities and rural water systems across 5,000 square miles in Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota. Executive Director Troy Larson tells us about the hard work involved in bringing this system into service and outlines the expansion it is likely to undergo in the future.

Then, we look at three companies that are breaking ground with new technologies to tackle challenges in the wastewater business. First, we speak with Orianna Bretschger, a cofounder and the CEO of Aquacycl, which treats difficult waste streams with its BioElectrochemical Treatment Technology package plants. The company also offers SulfideFix, a biological approach to remediating sulfide out of wastewater storage tanks.

Second, BDP EnviroTech’s Biological Double-Efficiency Process is a wastewater treatment technology that integrates multiple wastewater operations into a single tank, reducing energy use, expenditures, and plant footprint. Cofounder and CEO Eric Li tells us more about the worldwide deployment of the technology.

Third, Discflo Corporation builds pumps to work in some of the most demanding wastewater environments. In our interview with Nick Ruiz, the company’s vice president of business development, we review its technologies and their applications.

We wrap up this month with a conversation with Keith Yaskin, the president of The Flip Side Communications. He has useful words for municipal water agencies about the need for proactive communications, whether during crises or regarding their day-to-day work. Mr. Yaskin will be providing media training during our Municipal Water Leaders workshop, scheduled for March 11–13 in Palm Springs, California.

This month’s issue usefully illustrates to major sides of the municipal water industry: The need for major infrastructure facilities that span miles and fill city blocks and the need for constant technological advances that make those large pieces of infrastructure ever more efficient and effective.

Kris Polly is the editor-in-chief of Municipal Water Leader magazine and the president and CEO of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies. He can be contacted at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.