The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music]
SC Nation I get people asking me all the time how do I read so much as busy as I
am and the secret is a lot of my reading people do for me that’s right I use
Audible audible is a service that will read books to you and allow you to get
the content while you’re driving ding from account to account I’ve been using
Audible for years and you can try it for free one book and one month for free on
me through our affiliate link scaling up h2o.com
[Music] audible welcome to the scaling up H2O
podcast the podcast where we scale up on knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems I’m Trace Blackmore theost host
of the scaling up H2O podcast and happy May everybody it’s hard to believe we
are already in May all sorts of wonderful things happen in May and
there’s one event actually there’s two events that I want to talk about that I’m super excited about that’s happening
in May one is the global 6K that is taking place on May 18th and the global
6K you can even do on a treadmill you don’t have to go anywhere this this is
where we all come together as a nation to try to bring awareness to the global
Water Crisis and we’ve got all of that information for you available at scaling
up2.com 6K once you go to the website you will
find everything you need to know about the global 6K and one of the things that
I urge you to do is go ahead and sign up to sign up it’s
all of that money goes to Bringing water to people that do not have water it’s
amazing all the things that they can do for $50 and you will receive a T-shirt and a
bib they say it’s the bib that matters most and this is a picture of the person
that you are sponsoring it is a child you get to learn about them many people
have created pinp Power relationships with the people that they have sponsored and what you’re going to do is you’re
going to hang that up and let people know who you’re sponsoring and why you are sponsoring them and then sharing
that letting them know why you’re involved in this cause when it comes to race day you’re going to pin that bib to
your shirt and of course many many people are going to ask you what that bib is for what race you are in and you
are in a bright orange Global 6K for water t-shirt so people are going to see
you and at the very end you are going to keep that as a reminder that you changed
a life and hopefully somebody will ask you about that Nation it is such a cool
thing to do we’re busy in our day-to-day this is something we can do outside of our dayto day to make something fun to
celebrate water to celebrate we’re bringing water to people that need water it’s very easy to do it’s a great team
building and maybe you want to go ahead and create your own team well if you go to scaling up h2o.com
6K you can create your own team or you can join ours we want you to be on team
scaling up and through that we will have a a great time even though we are all
not together we know that we are doing something together and we are making a
difference one more time that’s scaling up h2o.com for SL 6K something else
that’s coming up this month and this is so cool because this is going to be the
fifth time that we have done it this is the rising tide Mastermind live event
which is taking place the week before the global 6K that’s May 13th through
15th you’ve heard from several Rising tide Mastermind members on this podcast
and folks it’s just amazing in the community within the scaling up community that we’ve created with the
rising tide Mastermind now this live event is here in Atlanta I say here in
Atlanta because that’s where I am and everybody comes into Atlanta we have
speakers come in we have assignments that we share with each other workshops
that we do there is so much action packed in those three short days people
just cannot wait to go back to to their teams and start doing all these things
that they’re learning and we are reinforcing not to mention the fact that we get so much time together in person
with our groups it is an amazing three days and I can’t wait for it I’m going
to have a great time I know the other members will as well and maybe that’s
something that you are looking for now I’m not here to say that the rising tide Mastermind is right for every body but I
will say a group like the rising tide Mastermind is right for everybody so if
you already have a group and it’s working out great awesome if you don’t have a group try to find a group where
people are pouring into you as much as you are pouring into them life is too
difficult to do it alone and when you’re doing life with other people especially
when you have a group like the rising tide Mastermind where they understand what your daytoday is so as you’re
having issues whether they’re technical whether they are professional whether they’re personal you name it these
people understand what your day-to-day is like so you don’t have to explain
that you can go straight into your issue and we have a special track that we use to help process issues and it is amazing
the things that people are accomplishing within the rising tied Mastermind people
don’t have to start from the first step other people have experienced similar
issues and from that they get to start maybe at step six with a whole action
plan that somebody has already done it is amazing all the things that are getting done within the rising tide
Mastermind but the thing that makes the rising tide Mastermind probably
incredible above everything else are the relationships it truly is a brother and
Sisterhood within the Water Treatment Community and it is second to none I’m
so proud of the members within the rising tide Mastermind and there’s just such a sense of support and community so
maybe that sounds like something you want to look into if it is go to scaling up h2o.com
Mastermind and we’ve got some things that you can read to learn more and if you’d like I’d love to get on a phone
call with you to see if this group is right for you Nation a few things you
might want to put on your calendar coming up in June 22nd through 26 ashray
is having their 2024 annual conference in Indianapolis Indiana so you might
want to check that out if you are going to be in that location around that time
ashray is a great organization and of course that’s where a lot of the
guidelines standards that we are having to work within come from so it’s not a
bad conference to attend if you are in the industrial water treatment industry
another one you might be interested in is the 2024 utility leadership conference and 54th annual meeting this
is taking place July 23rd through 26 in Buffalo New York this is hosted by the
National Association of Clean Water agencies we’re going to have all the information on this conference and all
the other ones I did not mention on our events page and you can get there simply
by going to scaling up2.com and navigating over to our events page
Nation there are so many events up there so I urge you when you’re not driving
from account to account make sure you keep your hands on 10 and two or 9 and
three or whatever they’re teaching these days so you’re safe out there on the roads but when you get to a location
where you can check out all of the conferences that are out there please do
that there’s so much that enhances your water treatment experiences when you go
to conferences like these and you get to meet people you do not currently know
folks this business is all about networking and any chance I can find to
increase who I know I know that’s going to make me a better water Traer and a
lot of times it allows me to meet new people that I can introduce to you on the scaling up H2O podcast so Nation if
we are at a conference together I hope to see you there and I hope that you are
making plans to attend a conference especially if it’s right in your backyard Nation let’s go ahead and get
to our interview today my lab partner is Mike
terasi Hydro geologist with wsp welcome Mike morning tra how are you today I am
doing great and I would love it if you define what a
hydrogeologist is a hydrogeologist is basically somebody who works with
groundwater and it’s water that’s under the ground as opposed to say a hydrologist who would be more likely to
work with surface water Stream flow that sort of thing the two are not unrelated
you know a lot of times the groundwater is close enough to the surface that it actually becomes surface water and the
surface water can infiltrate to become groundwater so kind of a symbiotic
relationship there depending on the topography but I focus primarily on the
groundwater and specifically with respect to remediation there’s a lot of facets of being a hydrogeologist the Two
Worlds the way I think of it is the clean world with water supply and the dirty world with the the remediation and
there’s a lot of linkages there too and I think we’re going to be talking about that quite a bit today I think we’ve got a lot of questions around that before we
get there do you mind telling the scaling up Nation a bit about yourself I’d be happy to so I’ve been a
hydrogeologist consultant now for a little over 30 years grew up in Pennsylvania started my career back in
New Hampshire working on an Air Force based remediation project spent a couple years there before I moved out to
California been out here ever since most of my projects are in Southern California I live in Northern California
but the geology out here the groundwater flow rainfall could not be more
different from what I grew up uh in Pennsylvania or experienced you know pretty much anywhere back East so
anywhere um you know as they say west of the 100th Midian it’s quite a bit different climate wise and that that’s
really reflected in the groundwater and and water supply issues I typically work on they’re called recalcitrant
contaminants so large scale plumes of chemicals that don’t break down very easily things like chlorinated
solvents and um you know these These are problems that take decades to clean up
typically now there’s a lot of different ways there’s always an Innovative technology being developed but and in my
30 years I’ve seen a lot of those Technologies be developed so it’s always a learning experience I’m really happy
about that yeah I’ve been really fortunate you know working with other hydrogeologists geologists Engineers you
know developing treatment uh you remedies that uh our clients Implement and trying to get things cleaned up Mike
last year we had several people on the show to just make us more aware around the water that we use in our day-to-day
practice of industrial water treatment we had a guest on that was talking about you know we can’t just put a well in and
expect that water to continue to be there and after that show aired many
people were trying to find more information out about that not too long ago we had a
uh attorney on to talk about how water is managed on the legal side and how
rights are done so people are wanting to know not just that we have water and how
do we use it in the end process but where is water going and all the things
that you’re currently doing so that’s where we’re going right now so with all that being said those guests coming on
the podcast my question for you is people are looking for different places to grab water and groundwater is a
natural assumption that they’re going to look for but not all water is portable
and that’s where you come in absolutely so when we’re looking at groundwater
whether you’re in California or anywhere in the country the first question is you know where is it because it’s not always
you know it depends on the geology and the topography some areas have an abundant amount of ground water and
others it’s very tight soils and the groundwater is there but it’s really not readily available you’re not going to
get a productive well so Supply is one question quality is another there’s a lot of natural they call them a geogenic
contaminants so metals and things like that that might make it unod but I’ve
worked really mostly with industrial contaminants so if and that includes
agriculture so you can be away from a you know industrialized area and still have a lot of enogen contaminants
particularly nitrate from over fertilization over the years that’s a rampant problem so the water quality
really becomes a an issue and the water quality can change over time and it can change in response to the pumping so
there’s parameters whether it’s oxygenated or not oxygenated that could also change the water quality because
some of these Metals will change their the railin state is what it’s called it’s a very dynamic system I guess I
would call it and the idea that we can just plunk a well in the ground and get as much water as you want anywhere is
just not reasonable whether it’s from a water supply standpoint or a water quality standpoint or a future water
quality standpoint or even a future water supply standpoint you know in California throughout the Southwest in
particular the major drought that we had until last year when that was pretty substantially reversed a lot of Wells
were going dry and you know you can only a lot of the responses were to put in a
deeper well you can only go so deep before you get to water that’s so old it’s just naturally mineralized it get
starts getting Briny again it’s treatable but it’s not something you’re just going to throw a pump in there and
start drinking you know it’s uh there’s a lot of work that goes into getting a well with a reliable water quality and
Supply Mike one of the things that we look at here in Georgia is what’s going
on in California because you guys start a lot of things and then that trickles across the country I know you’ve been
involved very heavily in a specific process and policy can you tell us about
that yeah so it’s called 97005 it’s a process memo the state developed this
back in 1997 that’s the 97005 apparently it was the fifth one
that year the title for this uh policy guidance is the direct domestic use of
extremely impaired sources that was its original title and it was a recognition
that there are some communities or water purveyors who really don’t have a choice they’re in a small geographic area or
for whatever reason they’re Limited in terms of what water supply options they have and this term extremely impaired
means that there’s a number of contaminants or criteria that make it unod it’s called extremely impaired
because it’s with respect to the maximum contaminant levels or notification levels that in my industry we usually
use in terms of remediation purposes meaning you have a sorcer
high high concentrations of a contaminant and we bring the concentrations down to below those mcls
the state is looking at it as if you have anything even slightly above them they consider it extremely impaired so
this is where the Two Worlds meeting it’s an important distinction in in the perspective on one hand uh the mcls are
kind of viewed as a Finish Line and on the states perspective it’s the starting line so um for myself working with this
policy has has required a little bit of a a mind shift and understanding how much more conservative for all the right
reasons that that the state is looking at this because we’re obviously talking about pable use Mike at a high level
view what are some things that are in 97005 so at a high level I think the the
first thing is the criteria you know what what would actually bring this to uh Public Water Supplies attention and
first of all it’s a public water supplier so this wouldn’t apply to something like a a homeowner I’m not
aware of many of any laws that require a homeowner to sampled their well which I
grew up on a well uh back in Pennsylvania we never sampled it everybody around us was on septic tanks
probably would have been a good idea to sample that more often but the regulations are really geared towards small community water suppliers or and
on up so the larger Municipal groups so I think that’s an important distinction
the first thing would be those criteria are so there’s you have to meet one of
two of a number of criteria and those are you concentrations that are either about 10 times above the MCL for
contaminants with uh chronic health effects or three times above those
levels for contaminants with acute health effects so there’s a distinction between one contaminant and another
they’re not all the same and it’s all about how human health is is impacted
whether you have one or those thresholds met and you have a known source area that’s been inadequately characterized
so all these contaminants came from someplace they’re not you we’re generally not talking about natural
contaminants that’s a that’s actually accounted for so knowing where the source area is and whether we know
enough about that Source area has to be considered it also accounts for surface
water most of the focuses on groundwater but if you do have if you’re relying on the surface water the gdia or the you
know virus detections presence really need to be accounted for so if you need
that to be treated that’s another criteria that would potentially trigger this if you have more than 5% treated
Wastewater in that surface Source then that’s another criteria that needs to be met but the last three really bring in a
lot of other uh projects potentially one’s is it an extremely threatened is
the source area extremely threatened by long-term or ongoing contamination areas so if you have a base in that has a
number of sources that might trigger a characterization like a super fun site and you’re trying to develop that area
for poble use that’s going to be a a hit basically whether you have a mixture of
contaminants which is pretty common and the last one would be is if you have a system where you’re actually intending
to capture the contamination which is actually the project that I’m working on it’s not incidental it’s actually part
of a remediation system so we want to capture that contamination because that’s part of the cleanup of this Basin
but we’re also going to be treating that water for poble use and this is not done
very frequently so it’s becoming increasingly important and um you know again because
the the the amount of contamination we keep finding new contaminants and the amount of water supply options we have
are just you know limited and becoming more limited so that those criteria are
really important up front the rest of the 97005 is about the steps that need
to be taken so it’s a very sequential intentional approach the first one is
really just to it’s fairly logical evaluating the uh the source area the
drinking water source area itself and what known contaminant areas are in that area so if you have a pumping well that
pumping well has a capture area you can model that you can simulate that it’s a basic you know overlay out on a map and
see what other known contaminate sites exist within that area whether it’s a gas station or landfill or you know
whatever you might have so that’s your sort of first initial assessment
secondly you would actually collect groundwater samples or potentially surface water samples and analyze that
for a very broad Suite of analyes when I do remediation work typically my clients
have a relatively focused number of contaminants you know something associated with you know whatever
landfill or industrial work and that’s the focus but here we’re really looking
very broadly so things that are above and beyond any particular contaminant area the state really wants to know if
you’re going to be pumping from this and you’ve got a lot of other contaminants out here and all these unknowns what else might be out there
things we don’t normally look for that’s Quite a feat in it in itself the number of bottles that we end up filling and
the coolers that end up being filled and sent off the lab is is pretty impressive so that’s done maybe every three years
or so uh just to make sure things are okay uh from there you would look at the
source areas where there’s contamination what protection is being implemented there is there a its own remediation
system at those sources so that’s that’s good to know and then the fourth step is
really when you get into the meat of the proposed treatment system itself you that’s where you’re describing the
treatment trains you’re demonstrating you have multiple barriers redundancies you’re estimating the influent water
quality based on all the data that you’ve collected and the pumps that you know the wells that you’re going to be pumping so a lot of Statistics go into
that just to you know demonstrate that you’ve done your homework the engineering is there they want to see
the operation monitoring and maintenance plan up front really kind of put it all out there to give the state some
assurance that yes you know what the contaminants are and this treatment system is going to handle all of those
contaminants and this is what we expect the treated water to look like uh with assurance is that you’ll be able to meet
the permitted discharge limits and the last step is the fail safe part it’s
sort of that that’s all nice now what happens if it fails and what’s the human health risk in that event so that’s
where you would show here are the alarms that would kick in here are all the triggers that would shut the treatment system down immediately if those failed
you here’s the risk that would happen for something with a chronic risk if you had an exceedence for like a minute
that’s not going to be a problem the state wants to keep it as obviously a short period of time as possible so
that’s where the logistics come in you know it’s so it’s a combination of a human health risk but also the failure
modes you know what what’s going to trigger a shutdown to prevent that from from being an issue and that that’s it
in a nutshell you know from there the state takes it all there’s usually a public review and um if you’re
successful you get an amended drinking water permit and off you go so hooray
they got their permit how long is that good for what do they have to do to make sure that stays current so that gets
into um a group that I worked with a couple years ago on the user guide so
there is a lot in this 97005 policy it’s been revised twice it came out
originally in 1997 there was a draft in 2015 and it was formally revised in 2020
uh the group I worked with CD they prepared a user guide uh that
paralleled that 2020 version and that is really a tool to help the public water
supplier go through this whole process and at the end gets to the point that you just mentioned how often does this
need to get reviewed so there is something we called an Adaptive management plan it’s basically to kind
of keep things fresh you look at things on a regular basis I think we had it’s about every 3 years or so but there’s a
routine evaluation if there’s a recognition that there’s a new contaminant if there’s a recognition
that there’s a new MCL for one of those contaminants you know basically any any
kind of substantive change that might affect your system that’s going to
trigger a re-review of some sort so that’s all part of this adaptive management plan and it might result in a
A Renewed application for the permit so that’s a really important Point too
because this is not static it’s not something that just goes on the Shelf we think the state does a really good job here
recognizing things change and things like posos that you know we now are all
learning more and more about is a pretty good example of that you know we this been around for decades it’s been in
groundwater uh for decades it’s in your blood and my blood right now and yet we didn’t know about it until relatively
recently so I think that’s going to continue as the analytical technology continues to get better and better we’re
going to just keep finding things like this and it’s an important feedback mechanism to make sure that are the
treatment trains that we developed still adequate for this kind of new realization as precipitation patterns
change snowfall rain all of those items I know California is very much affected
by that I can see many people going to a groundwater Source rather than the other
sources that they’re relying on now what are some of the changes that you’re expecting because of that
huge changes what I’m seeing with the climate change is that the the snow pack in particular is becoming less and less
reliable sometimes we have a major snow pack other times we you know there’s hardly anything there and California in
particular is heavily dependent on the snow pack we have huge reservoirs up in the Foothills and the sieras they’re
meant they’re designed to capture the snow melt and then that gives us enough time to distribute that water throughout
the state and it’s an amazing system that was designed a century ago and here
we are today so you take that snow pack and replace it with rain we don’t have enough Reservoir capacity to capture all
that so the reservoirs when they were developed you know a century ago they were covering water supply as well as
flood control so now there’s renewed concerns about flood control and water supply so one thing that’s happening is
something called managed Aqua for recharge this is not a New Concept but it’s a renewed intensity to develop you
know some way of getting this surface water all this all this recharge into the ground more quickly and that is not
easy you know infiltration is not a particularly fast process naturally it
would take years decades centuries depending on what you know what the surface conditions are like and we need
it there now so when we do that you know that’s going to be changing groundwater flow conditions it changes the direction
of the groundwater flow depending on the water quality that’s being injected or percolated or however we get that in
there it might change the water quality it should improve the water quality that’s certainly the intent but if
there’s already contamination in the groundwater Basin then that contamination gets displaced so there’s
a lot of opportunity for unintended consequences and that’s where the data and the monitoring and the vigilance
really comes into play and I think the state’s all over it you know there there’s a lot of people looking at this
we all understand those those risks and concerns and the need to to figure something out here so that’s that’s one
option that I’m seeing whether it’s some larger reservoirs that might be able to also buttress some of this change but uh
one way or the other getting getting the groundwater to be more reliable as well do you see Supply sources switching so
for example if we are getting good precipitation we’re going to use this Source however if we are in a drought we
can now switch over to this yeah complicated question when we
go into a drought typically I think we the state has about 40% reliability on
groundwater for a a normal year when we go into an extended drought period that can increase by another 50% so 60 65%
would become groundwater so there’s already an infrastructure out there that can lean more heavily on groundwater egg
in particular you know they’re kind of dual engine if you will they we have a lot of levies out there can direct the
surface water and they can tap into that but they can also the pump from groundwater and the groundwater is
probably more expensive because you have to pump from the surface it’s electrical use in addition to water quality issues
so that dual system already exists to a degree municipalities are a little bit
different they’re they tend to be geared more one way or the other I know in Atlanta you’re probably I think you’re
drinking from the I think it’s the chattah huchi river if I remember right chattah huchi drains into Lake laner and
that’s where most of our water comes from you’re pretty well read on Atlanta yeah well I did a homework but I don’t
know if if Atlanta has a groundwater you know well field that they can pull on if there was something that went you know
wrong with the with the river intake more and more California does and one of those drivers is the seismic activity so
San Francisco in particular has a whole backup system that you know their own
storage system as well as some wells that they could pump from not very long though you know the groundwater supplies
in the city of San Francisco pretty Limited so that’s why they have the
pipeline that they have the Hy system and um again there’s only so much you
can do so groundwater becoming more reliable it’s it’s a pretty widespread need for that since a lot of our laws
come from California what do you think other states can learn as they’re developing similar policies and
procedures I think what other states can learn and every every state has its its approach for a lot of good reasons you
know if you go to the Midwest a lot of the the groundwater there is coming from the ogalala aquafer it’s a an enormous
multi-state aquafer literally from South Dakota all the way down to Texas and
that has largely supplied the agricultural Midwest it’s also been substantially dewatered for the past
five six decades and awareness of that and kind of the realization that this is
a finite resource has led to flattening out that dewatering curve and in some
areas restoring it it’s amazing what we can do and I think what other states can learn from what we’re learning in
California is that there well first of all there are limits and I think most most states are aware of that but
there’s a path forward that if the contaminant becomes an issue in a certain area in a drinking water source
all hope is not lost you know there there is a way to go there’s engineering and technologies that can make this safe
and there’s a process that exists with this 97005 that’s really transferable
anywhere it’s you know the the steps that I described nothing specific to California there it’s really it really
just comes down to the scientific method when you boil it down it’s understanding what the problem is making sure you have
enough data to support that understanding that you continue to generate data to make sure that that
understanding is you know current you know you don’t things don’t change and
it’s all about the technology to make sure that the problem is is actually
going to be remedied and continue to be remedied over time we want it to be effective the California with this 97005
you know the the goal is always to get to the lowest treatment level possible feasible I’m not sure what the word is
but there’s a there’s a limit there’s some cost calculus that needs to come into there but they want it to be safe
you bottom line uh they also want it to be as effective from a Ive standpoint
instead of like a filtration uh so if you have a filtered type remedy that’s
good from a you know improving the water quality and making it safe to drink but then you have all the contaminants bound
up in a filter and that probably goes to a landfill or gets incinerated or something it just kind of makes another
waste management stream so that’s where a lot of the technology is going as well
what can we do that’s going to be effective and not create other problems so it’s really the whole the whole
picture of identifying the the contaminate recognizing what you need from a water supply standpoint and then
what do you do about that in the most effective way that’s not going to create another waist stream that might create a
problem for some other part of the state or another state what would you want our listeners to know about
97005 and how it pertains to them and their usage purposes so there’s a lot of
different applications um how people use this water ultimately the potable water is going to be driven by the drinking
water standards that’s the focus behind 975 is the human health uh risk from
poble use there are a lot of other issues with water obviously you know depending on on where it’s being applied
whether it’s you know even for non-potable uses I don’t think 975 would necessarily apply to a non-potable
situation however there’s a lot of correlations with it too I would want the scaling up Nation to appreciate that
hydrogeologists like myself Engineers really understand the source of the water even before it gets into the pipe
how this might be impacting its ultimate use so whether it’s literally a scaling
factor or you know how that’s going to be affecting equipment in California back in the 70s and 80s there was this
thing called Silicon Valley and one of the reasons why I think it happened in
California was the water supply was being driven by snowmelt out of the
sieras and that’s very high quality water so the water used in the
industrial purposes helped facilitate that industrial purpose so there’s a lot
of science that goes into this and I’m I’ve always been excited in the subsurface the groundwater aspect of
things that when I work with the municipal pullup water group they may be more focused if not entirely focused on
the piping and you know the above ground facilities for all the right reason reasons and just maybe not necessarily
took it for granted but a lot of people do take for granted that the groundwater is going to be there and it’ll just be
reliable and if it if it becomes a problem over time it’s because the well just got too old and you just had to put
in a new well and the reality is that’s not always the case you know there there really are changes that happen in the
subsurface as groundwater is depleted or as freshwater is brought in from even
for all the best intentions from a recharge percolation standpoint to kind of replenish that Basin considering all
the other land uses industrial agricultural things are changing you know we’re putting other things into
that Basin and over time uh that may become a different situation so that’s
really what I kind of love about my job and I I would hope that um if nothing
else you know your listeners would start marveling at the the wonders of of groundwater all the subsurface the dark
art that uh you know people like me practice looking ahead what trends do
you anticipate in the utilization of treated groundwater for portable purposes well I mentioned posos earlier
and I think that’s that’s definitely not going away anytime soon so those are perorin compounds and their nickname is
the forever chemicals so they they do not break down very easily they come in short chains and long chains and
branches and I won’t get into the organic chemistry of it but the longer chains do tend to get filtered out with
carbon relatively well so that’s good because a lot of the poble sources water
treatment systems over the years carbon’s pretty common the caveat there is that nobody was monitoring posos in
the effluence so normally carbon is good for you know whatever contaminant and then you start getting breakthrough and
you have to change out the carbon so we had incidental treatment but now we recognize uh we have to be more you know
explicitly monitoring for posos even if you do have a carbon system in there that doesn’t destroy the posos so that
gets to something else I mentioned before it’s not now that carbon needs to be dealt with so even if you are
removing it from the drinking water supply you now have generated a carbon waste that needs to be dealt with so
this is an ongoing process of developing scalable destructive Technologies so
posos definitely a big problem i’ I’ve heard talk whether can even really be cleaned up you know this it’s such a
widespread contaminant and the concentrations that present health risks
are so incredibly low it really feels like a another generation you know the
the next you know decades you we’ll be dealing with this for sure so that’s that’s one uh definitely I mentioned
managed aquafer recharge I think that’s going to become more and more prevalent there’s a lot more guidance that’s being
developed uh just in the past 5 years I see that only increasing water
recycling is going to become more important as well California just I think last summer released a guidance
for direct poble reuse what we’ve been talking about today for 97005 is similar to that with water
recycling there is indirect and direct poble reuse and indirect would be if you take Wastewater you treat it to some
high quality and then you inject that back into the ground and usually there’s
uh a time and space buffer before that injected water would be allowed to be extracted again from a poble use and
it’s meant to provide some additional filtration you know if there’s viruses
in there they they wouldn’t survive for a certain period of time so that’s um that’s been around for quite some time
direct poble use is when you would take treated Wastewater take it to an even higher degree of quality and then
directly provide that for poble use so much more engineering it’s akin to what
we’re talking about for 97005 the big difference is that what I’m doing is taking contaminated groundwater and
treating it that’s a fundamentally different water supply from a Wastewater
with the big difference being viruses so that technology though is going to
become more and more important and that’s something that I’m seeing happen in California San Diego and and Los
Angeles have have two pretty major uh projects that are on the horizon and
we’ll be seeing that quite a bit more often so la literally I think by 20135
has a goal that they have zero Wastewater and I think it’s it should be
zero available Wastewater but it’s an admirable goal and that they want to take that water treat it and whether
it’s indirect poble or direct poble reuse bring it back into the water supply system they they recognize and I
think La is is a nice mic CM for you know many other parts of the world they
recognize the water that they rely on much of which is imported or groundwater
based uh that imported water just isn’t going to be available it goes beyond California the the Colorado River Basin
I’m sure you’ve heard is not doing well it’s substantially depleted and this is
something that’s been going on for decades John Wesley Powell said it well in the 1800s that we cannot develop the West
like we did the East it was very preent that way and it took us 150 years but we
seem to be realizing his his warning uh more and more now with the it’s only getting worse with the climate changes
the variations that we’re seeing in in the rainfall patterns but the Colorado River is a major source of water for
California and it’s it’s been over taxed you know for decades so all of this is
coming together and forcing us to evaluate whether it’s 97005 to make
contamined groundwater a viable poble sort of water or water recycling one way
or the other I think both of those are going to be pretty major there’s always a lot of talk about desalination the
technology is certainly there it’s very energy intensive it’s very expensive I’m not sure how much you can really scale
that up but I think for a lot of Cal communities it certainly is being relied upon for good reason whether that can
really become you replace an agricultural supply of water I I think that seems unlikely but the technology
is very important and I think the last thing that comes in mind is the the contaminants you know I mentioned that
we’re just going to keep finding new contaminants like posos but there’s also things like microplastics and those are
becoming more of an issue which I never thought of in terms of a groundwater it’s really more of a surface water but
there are groundwater aspects of it as well which is a little mind-blowing so for me it just continues to Astound me
that how we just have to keep fresh there’s no Finish Line to this you know we just have to keep learning stay
vigilant if somebody wanted to learn more about 97005 and the work that you do where
should they go well I think I shared with you a link to the state’s web page it’s the state Water Resources control
board uh division of drinking water so you can do a search for 97005 you’ll find the guidance the
policy memo itself and right next to it you’ll see a link for the user guide and
the user guide has I think there’s two links one for the guide and one for some appendices so all of that’s you know
very readily available and again I think it would serve well for anybody in the in the country or even different parts
of the world the logic there is applicable just apply it to your own hydroge Geographic environment and I I
think there’s a lot there to work with there’s also a lot of great groups I’ve been uh a member of national groundwater
Association for years in California we have kind of our state version of that’s groundwater uh resources Association is
almost two years short of a founding member of that both of those are fantastic references whether you’re in
California or not there’s um a lot of focus on well maintenance and and operations and investigations and
characterizations and Remediation work and water supply and legal developments
we didn’t really touch much on the legal aspect of all this today but we could probably go on for another hour there
alone water rights is a very State dependent type thing so there’s not to
mention federal laws and then on the remedi s specifically I get a lot of information out of a site called cluin
cl- or ITC it’s a Interstate technology and Regulatory Council so those both are
are just great resources those are just a few there’s there’s a lot online you can also get a shocking amount of
information from YouTube there it is everything’s on YouTube now everything’s on YouTube it’s amazing Mike trasy thank
you so much for coming on the scaling up H2O podcast and and having us think a little bit differently when it comes to
groundwater well I appreciate the opportunity I really enjoyed talking with you about
it scale Nation this is another example if I did not have this awesome podcast I
would not have met Mike so so many wonderful things happen because I
purchased this microphone and because you listen to the recordings I make on this microphone and one of those things
is I get to meet great people like Hydro geologist Mike and how many people even
knew that that was a term Hydro geology so there we go we are learning together
I’ve heard of the term but I’ve never met a hydro geologist until Mike so Mike
thank you for introducing the scaling up Nation not only to you but the world of hydro geology and I remember one of the
first examples of somebody that made an impact with me that want to get in this
industry was a hydrologist now my father was in this industry but he was my
father so what did he know right I remember I was in seventh grade and a
hydrologist came into our earth science class and he was talking about all the
things that he does to sample water to make sure that the water was within the
ranges that it needed to what he did if it wasn’t and I just thought it was so cool and he had a test kit that was just
like my dad’s and that really got me thinking about what my dad did so I
don’t know when the last time you spoke to some students about what it was that
you do on a day-to-day basis but I attribute that person coming in and
talking to my science class the pivotable moment that got me talking to
my dad to want to learn more about what it was that he did so you never know
what ripple effect pun intended that you were going to create when you share with
somebody that doesn’t have that knowledge now mik coming on the show today teaches us industrial water
treaters that it’s important to keep up to dat with how water is being used and
in some cases reused and our customers today they’re they’re looking for ways
that they can minimize their impact of resources that they’re using and they
can ALS Al increase the amount of profit they get to give to shareholders so
those two things come together when we talk about water so if you have not run into a customer that’s not trying to
reuse their water or maybe and like we were talking with Mike’s case actually
generate their own portable water from a site that they have onsite I promise
that will happen and when that happens it’s good for you to know know that that
is going on and how to guide that conversation it reminds me of a
conversation that never happened with one of our customers now we had a really good relationship actually we still do
they’re a customer of ours but they went ahead and switch their water source from
City makeup to onsite water that they were treating themselves and they
started sending it into their cooling tower and their Chiller they never told us that they were doing this in fact
when we asked what they were doing they said they were going to use it for nonpotable uses like washing hands and
toilet flushing and things like that but they never told us they were going to use it within the cooling tower well the
chiller started going off an alarm that it was using too much energy or at least
not the correct amount of energy that it would have used when it was clean and of course course we got blamed you’re
scaling this Chiller up and it was scale now with that we found out and we told
the customer within a very short amount of time hey your water has changed what
happened oh yeah we’re now using this other source of water well hey guys that
would have been a great conversation for us to have before you actually did it but we can’t go back in time we don’t
really have a flux capacitor equipped DeLorean so we have to deal with it now
and what we ended up doing was we changed the chemistry and we worked with
our controller vendors to put a makeup meter and conductivity on each incoming
makeup so if they were using City Water the controller knew about that if they
were using the water they were producing there on site the controller knew that
and it was able to adjust the program on demand well that changed everything we
were able to put a disperson into the water and boy does it not take a lot of
time to scale up a chiller it takes a lot of time to clean it up online but we did get it cleaned up we had a great
conversation and I think our customer now understands the importance of having
the conversation when you’re going to change the water that the water treater is treating you should probably let them
know so I give this as a public service announcement no matter how good you have
a relationship with your customers sometimes they’ve got so many things on their plate they just don’t think about
telling you certain things so it is imperative that if you see something you say something hey I noticed there’s a
lot of equipment outside looks like you guys are doing something with producing your own water or reusing some water
tell me about that okay you’re not going to use it in the cooling system is there
any possibility that that can happen now if we had that conversation maybe we
would have gone to the same problem that we had and solved but maybe that would
have sparked something so just realize that our customers have a lot on their plates so we need to make sure if we see
something and we think that might affect the program that we are the fiduciaries
of that equipment the equipment cannot talk and who else knows that equipment better than the water treaters so we
need to translate what that equipment should be telling the owner the customer we have to be that translator I know
that’s kind of silly to think about but if we think about that imagine all the conversations that we need to have and
that’s why industrial water Traders I think are so important because we are
the liaison between the equipment and the owner between the equipment and the
company that’s maintaining that equipment and the company that’s maintaining to that equipment and the owner and all the other people in
between we are the people that connect the dots and it’s important that we’re always having conversations with
everybody that’s coming to that party Nation as you know our friend James
McDonald is making sure that we are staying on our toes and we are devouring
information to become better water treaters every single week here’s a
brand new installment of drop by drop with [Music]
James welcome to drop by drop with James the podcast segment where we wonder
explore think about imagine and learn IND dustrial water treatment you guessed
it drop by drop together in today’s segment I have a
what if for you H what if the cooling tires blow down
stopped flowing there is no more blowdown going down the drain
period first what could cause this to happen what could cause a valve to fail
closed what could block the blowdown line what setting could have been changed in the
controller second what would be the impact upon the cooling tire system next
would the impact be quick or slow what would the water start to look like what
data in the cooling water system would start to change and in what direction how could you detect this
problem early and been alerted that action was required I’m James McDonald and I want
to encourage you to be like water by forming bonds with those around you dissolving new knowledge and making
worthy ripples drop by drop thank you James Nation if you have
a show idea or request go to scaling up2.com
show ideas and you can fill out a form and let us know what you want us to talk
about what question you want us to answer who you want us to interview that is how we ensure that we have thousands
of shows in the bag ready to bring to you thank you for all you do out there
in the scaling up Nation to make sure that water is always being used properly
and people understand the value of water and all the things that they need to do
to make sure that their equipment is running properly Nation take care of yourselves and we’ll have a brand new
episode for you next week have a great week folks
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