Quality Water — A new look at the tap

As an environmental software and services company, we work closely with companies that need to follow Federal, State and Local compliance mandates to ensure the status quo of the environment.  One market segment that always amazes me is drinking water. Every single day, public water systems test your tap water.

Everyday single day, water is collected, tested, analyzed and reported to internal public water teams, and less frequently, external agencies.   Today we announced that San Jose Water Company, that serves more than one million people in the Silicon Valley region, has selected Locus for our environmental software and mobile app solution, EIM and Locus Mobile.  The deployed systems consolidates and manages San Jose Water’s field data collection; water compliance and water quality data; and all its environmental compliance and environmental data.  SJWC will also use the Locus EIM to manage its environmental permits for all its sites and facilities.

Want to learn more about water?  Check out these resources:

​View the 6-minute TedTalk “It’s time to put water first” by Heather Himmelberger from the University of New Mexico, Director of the Southwest Environmental Finance Center at the University of New Mexico.

For more information, please visit www.drinktap.org.

 

Locus Technologies’ Customer Exelon Corp. to Present at the NAEM EHS and Sustainability Software Conference Feb 24-25

Exelon’s Eric Schwarz to Discuss “Succeeding in Managing Water Quality and Monitoring at Nuclear Facilities”

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 17 February 2015 — Locus Technologies, a leader in environmental compliance and sustainability management software, today announced that Exelon Corporation’s Radiochemist/Radiological Environmental Monitoring Program Administrator, Eric Schwarz, will present at The National Association for Environmental Management (NAEM) conference as part of the EH&S and Sustainability Software conference on Wednesday, February 25 from 3 p.m. – 4:45 p.m. The presentation and demonstration will focus on his experience and insight on water quality management at Exelon’s nuclear facilities. Exelon is one of the largest U.S. power generators that delivers electricity and natural gas to more than 7.8 million customers and distinguished as one of the nation’s cleanest and lowest-cost power generating organizations. At the conference, Locus will host its corporate booth, booth 12, located in Ballroom I, at the Westin Tampa Harbour Island Conference Center.

Title: Succeeding in Managing Water Quality and Monitoring at Nuclear Facilities
When: Two sessions – Wednesday, February 25 from 3 p.m. – 4:45 p.m.
Where: Westin Tampa Harbour Island Conference Center, Ballrooms I & II
Exelon to Discuss and Demonstrate: Radiological groundwater protection program operations and monitoring data management is critical for 11 nuclear facilities in the U.S. and Canada. The demo will show how Locus EIM, ePortal, and Locus Mobile provides enterprise tools for proactive trending, analysis, visualization, and reporting from massive data aggregation from varied sources.
Who: Eric Schwarz, Exelon’s Radiochemist/ Radiological Environmental Monitoring Program Administrator. Schwarz oversees the radiological environment monitoring and radioactive effluent controls for Exelon’s Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania. Schwarz’s nuclear radiochemistry career began in the U.S. Navy where, for more than 14 years, he gained technical expertise in several disciplines and specialties to ensure regulatory compliance and safety.

NAEM empowers corporate leaders to advance environmental stewardship, create safe and healthy workplaces, and promote global sustainability. Locus Technologies is a Gigabyte sponsor at this event.

Locus Technologies’ Relationship with Chevron Environmental Management Company (CEMC) Renewed

Locus EIM SaaS Named as Preferred Solution for Environmental Data Management

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 10 February 2015 — Locus Technologies, a leader in environmental and EH&S compliance enterprise and sustainability software, today announced that Chevron Environmental Management Company (CEMC), a subsidiary of Chevron Corporation, one of the world’s largest integrated energy companies, has extended its relationship with the company to include contract renewal as well as distinguishing Locus’ award-winning Environmental Information Management (EIM) solution as the system of record for managing environmental-based analytical lab and field data.

Chevron selected Locus EIM system as its preferred solution after a year-long competitive bidding process that included rigorous proof of concept testing, vendor capability analysis, and usability testing. Locus EIM will provide a scalable SaaS system for sustainable management of environmental analytical lab and field data. Locus EIM will support Chevron’s EMC’s standardized processes to improve environmental data quality, accessibility, and reporting.

“Locus has supported Chevron with our flagship EIM software since 2003,” said Neno Duplan, CEO and president of Locus Technologies. “Corporations today want to invest into one environmental and sustainability solution that offers scalability, system flexibility, and user friendliness, while at the same time, achieve operational cost reductions and improve their environmental stewardship. Many Fortune 500 companies who need a comprehensive solution designed for sustainability, compliance and reporting rely upon our Locus EIM SaaS solution. We are pleased that Chevron selected EIM as a system of record for their environmental data and information management.”

 

ABOUT LOCUS EIM
The Locus EIM SaaS offers enterprise environmental information management for analytical data for water quality, chemicals, radionuclides, geology and hydrogeology. EIM provides the whole solution and supports workflow from sample planning, collection, analysis, data validation, visualization and reporting. Locus Mobile is fully integrated with EIM and provides for real time field data collection and synchronization with EIM.

California to Regulate Groundwater in 2015

California’s drought prompted the Legislature into action in 2014, leading lawmakers to regulate groundwater for the first time. The state will begin the long process of regulating groundwater for the first time in the state’s history under three new laws that require local agencies to create sustainable groundwater management plans to ensure priority basins are sustainable by 2040.

Since the state’s founding, water has been considered a property right; landowners have been able to pump as much water from the ground as they want. But increasing reliance on underground water, particularly during droughts, has led to more pumping from some basins than what is naturally being replaced.

On 16 September 2014, California Governor Jerry Brown signed three companion bills, The three bills: SB 1168, AB 1739 and SB 1319, which compose the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (the Act) create the first comprehensive framework for regulating groundwater in California, placing managerial and monitoring responsibilities in the hands of local agencies while also creating mechanisms under which state agencies may oversee and potentially even intervene in groundwater management. With the Act to go into effect on 1 January 2015, and numerous implementation deadlines, stakeholders throughout the state should prepare for increased regulation, management, and oversight.

The Act requires the establishment of groundwater sustainability agencies (GSA) for groundwater basins in the state. By 31 January 2015, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) will classify each groundwater basin (as identified by DWR Bulletin 118) as high, medium, low or very low priority. GSAs responsible for high- and medium-priority groundwater basins must create and implement a groundwater sustainability plan (GSP) for their basins. Groundwater basins, or portions of groundwater basins, which are subject to a previous groundwater adjudication are exempt from the GSP requirement.

Once formed, GSAs will have broad groundwater management and investigatory powers to prepare and execute the GSP. GSAs may inspect property or facilities to ensure the requirements of the GSP are being met, including use of surface waters. Further, the GSA will have the authority to regulate and limit groundwater extractions, require the submission of annual extraction reports or impose well spacing requirements, among other substantial powers.

The Act requires that GSPs be designed to achieve “sustainable groundwater management” for the basin within 20 years of implementation. “Sustainable groundwater management” is defined as the maintenance of groundwater use in a manner that does not cause “undesirable results.” An undesirable result is the occurrence of at least one of the following:

  • Chronic lowering of groundwater levels, indicating a significant and unreasonable depletion of supply.
  • Significant and unreasonable reduction of groundwater storage.
  • Significant and unreasonable seawater intrusion.
  • Significant and unreasonable degradation in water quality.
  • Significant and unreasonable land subsidence that substantially interferes with surface land uses.
  • Surface water depletions that have significant and unreasonable adverse impacts on beneficial uses of the surface water.

About $10 billion = The 2014 Corporate EHS Non-compliance and Fines Cost

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its annual enforcement and compliance results revealing both the cleanup improvements as well as compliance fines industries have made in 2014. In this report, the agency focused on large, high impact enforcement cases. Environmental Cleanup Improvements:

  • Reductions of an estimated 141 million pounds of air pollutants, including 6.7 million pounds of air toxics.
  • Reductions of approximately 337 million pounds of water pollutants.
  • Clean up of an estimated 856 million cubic yards of contaminated water/aquifers.

Investment and Fines
Enforcement guidelines this year required companies to invest more than $9.7 billion in actions and equipment to control pollution as well as clean up contaminated sites. EPA’s non-compliant cases resulted in $163 million in combined federal administrative, civil judicial penalties, and criminal fines. EPA holds criminal violators accountable that threaten the health and safety of American residents.

“Despite challenges posed by budget cuts and a government shutdown, we secured major settlements in key industry sectors and brought criminal violators to justice. This work resulted in critical investments in advanced technologies and innovative approaches to reduce pollution and improve compliance,” said Cynthia Giles, Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.
Companies can reduce their non-compliance risks and lower their monitoring and reporting costs by implementing enterprise EHS and Sustainability software to automate information management, compliance, and monitoring for exceedances for a fraction of what potential fines could cost them. Once a non-compliance fine is imposed the cost of brand damage could be even worse and incalculable.

US-China Deal on Carbon Emissions to Potentially Impact Climate Talks

In 1997, the world’s first climate change treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, failed to stop the rise of plant-warming pollution. Nearly two decades later, there is new hope for the impending climate change negations that are to occur in Paris next year.

Earlier this month, Obama and Xi Jinping, China’s president, came to an agreement to commit to lowering their nations’ carbon emissions. The ramifications of such a commitment from two of the world’s largest emitters has many environmentalists excited for a shift in global politics.

As David B. Sandalow, Obama’s former assistant secretary for energy policy and international affairs, comments, “For the world’s biggest emitters to be coming together and announcing concrete numbers, serious numbers, sends a signal to the world.” One of the many reasons the Kyoto Protocol is not considered a success is due to a standoff between the two nations who refused to sign the deal in 1997.

The Kyoto plan was meant to force developed countries, such as the United States, to cut fossil fuel emissions, while developing countries like China were exempt. Due to these conditions, the United States refused to ratify the treaty. Since 1997, China has grown to become one of the world’s largest carbon polluters. The standoff between two of the world’s superpowers caused many other governments to refuse to cut emissions as well.

Despite these negotiations, many experts claim that these emissions reductions are not enough to reduce the global atmospheric temperatures. Scientists expect the atmospheric temperature to increase by at least 2 degrees Celsius, tipping the planet into a trend of dangerous warming. Such conditions will result in the loss of large areas of arable land, melting Arctic sea ice and rapidly increasing sea levels, among many other dreadful climate changes.

These Scientists have concluded that in order to avoid such catastrophic conditions, the world’s largest economies must commit to a much more extreme plan of emission reduction, in a much shorter amount of time. Additionally, many Paris deal-negotiating experts claim that in order for significant change to occur, the final deal must include a tax on industries for their carbon emissions.

Although many are hopeful for the upcoming Paris negotiations, others are taking a more pragmatic stance. Laurence Tubiana, France’s climate change ambassador to the United Nations, states that she does not believe the Paris deal will result in a traditional treaty. Tubiana envisions a “Paris Alliance” which she anticipated will resemble a collection of targets pledge by individual countries, as well as governmental pledges to follow through with domestic action.

The opinions on how the Paris deal will pan out are varied; many are not convinced how the agreement between the United States and China will influence other major emitters. Despite these concerns, negotiators can all agree that if the treaty fails to stave off a 2-degree temperature increase, the 2015 deal must include provisions to assist poor countries deal with the resulting climate change.  Rich countries will meet in Berlin to formally announce their pledges for such provisions, with hopes of reaching their $100 billion goal.

Internet of Things and the Climate Change

The future of climate change management lies in the ability to use a holistic approach to environmental data and monitoring information. This merging of technological advances, such as real-time sensors, big data technologies, and Internet of Things (IoT), gives industries and governments the ability to effectively predict and manage climate change.

In any industry, when all incoming data is connected and centrally accessible through a SaaS application, the flow of information is much more efficient and effective. For example, instead of having a separate file and procedure for energy management, waste management, environmental compliance and incident management, a company can have all emissions-related records environmental and H&S compliance data in one system. From this single system, they would have the ability to manage compliance activity, data monitoring, and resource management at the same time. Adopting such a structure offers any entity the ability to converge all incoming sources of information to create a much more integrated enterprise platform for EH&S+S management.

At the crux of this method of centralized information is the Internet of Things. The IoT is the interconnection of uniquely identifiable embedded computing devices within the existing internet infrastructure. The proliferation of IoT is expected to usher in an age of automation in the environmental field, while enabling advanced applications like a smart grid or real time water quality measurement and management. IoT is able to offer connectivity beyond machine-to-machine communications and cover a variety of protocols, domains and applications.

In relation to environmental management, a “Thing” in the IoT could refer to flow monitoring sensors, a groundwater monitoring well, emission monitoring stations, Gas Chromatography (GC) instruments  used in analytical chemistry for  testing the purity of a particular substance, or separating the different components of a mixture or  identifying a compound. Ultimately, any natural or man-made object that can be assigned an IP address and provided with the ability to transfer data over a network can become a thing in the IoT. The expanded use of this system is expected to create a plethora of new areas of application for internet connected automation. And, in turn, the IoT is also expected to generate a large amount of data from a huge variety of environmental monitoring devices, thereby increasing the need for better indexing, processing, and storing of incoming data.

The IoT is considered one of the fastest growing trends in technology. When applied to the environmental monitoring industry, there will be an overwhelming influx of information that will have to be dealt with. Many companies are concerned that the sheer volume of data will render the information useless. Environmental companies must invest in smart software and intelligent databases to deal with this new trend, hopefully changing the face of the environmental monitoring industry.

California’s Water Shortage

A new paper published in Nature Climate Change, by NASA water scientist James Famiglietti, presents the chilling reality of California’s ongoing drought crisis. “The Global Groundwater Crisis,” uses satellite data to measure the depletion of the world’s aquifers, and summarizes the effects this has on the environment.

These aquifers contain groundwater that more than 2 billion individuals rely on as their primary source of water. Groundwater is also essential, as it is one of the main sources we rely on to irrigate food crops. In times of drought, the lack of rain and snow results in less surface water (the water that settles in lakes, streams, and rivers). Thus, farmers must rely on available groundwater to irrigate their crops, leading to rapid depletion in areas of high farming concentration.

California’s Central Valley has been one of the most effected regions in the state. The map below depicts groundwater withdrawals in California during the first three years of the state’s ongoing drought.

According to James Famiglietti, “California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins have lost roughly 15 cubic kilometers of total water per year since 2011.”  That means “more water than all 38 million Californians use for domestic and municipal supplies annually—over half of which is due to groundwater pumping in the Central Valley.”

As more water is pumped from the aquifers, things can only get worse. As this trend continues, wells will have to be dug deeper, resulting in increased pumping costs. This, in turn, will lead to a higher salt contents, which inhibits crop yields and can eventually cause soil to lose productivity altogether. Over time, Famiglietti writes, “inequity issues arise because only the relatively wealthy can bear the expense of digging deeper wells, paying greater energy costs to pump groundwater from increased depths and treating the lower-quality water that is often found deeper within aquifers.” This problem is already apparent in California’s Central Valley.  Some low-income residents are forced to let their wells go dry, while many other farmers are forced to irrigate with salty water pumped from deep in the aquifer.

The lesson we can learn from Famiglietti’s research is that “Groundwater is being pumped at far greater rates than it can be naturally replenished, so that many of the largest aquifers on most continents are being mined, their precious contents never to be returned.”  This problem of diminishing groundwater is perpetuated, due the lack of forethought, regulation, or research concerning this water source. Famiglietti contends that if current trends hold, “groundwater supplies in some major aquifers will be depleted in a matter of decades.”

Without any change of practices, we can expect steeper droughts and more demand for water. Famiglietti suggests that if we ever plan on getting the situation under control, we must start carefully measuring groundwater and treat it like the precious resource that it is. However, if the globe continues on this path without any adjustment, it will most likely result in civil uprising and international violent conflict in the water-stressed regions of the world.

UN report: Irreversible climate change deadline

The latest United Nations’ world climate report states that greenhouse gas emissions will need to stop by 2100 or the world will face irreversible change.

The final report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) includes the findings from the three previous reports, and includes more than 30,000 independent studies about climate. The bottom line conclusion is a 95 percent accurate assessment that climate change is both real and almost entirely man-made. It also states that if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, the results will be irreversible. Effects will include even hotter years than the recent record setting ones, rising sea levels, agricultural disruption, and even potential changes in the male-female population ratios.

The physical changes outlined in the report won’t be the limit to the secondary societal changes. Famine and drought have already exasperated issues in parts of Africa, and rising human migration from areas affected by climate change will cause even more conflicts between nation states. The rise in heat will also cause increases in health issues.

2014 may be the hottest year on record, and if the heat trends continue, growing regions will change, causing untold potential economic disruption to traditional agricultural areas. Coastal towns and resort communities could find themselves underwater and forced to move inland to higher elevations or forcing never-ending construction of offshore breakwaters.

The primary conclusion from the IPCC report is that all countries will need to reduce, and eventually halt, use of fossil fuels and move to renewable and environmentally friendly sources of energy. And while twenty-eight European nations have agreed to reduce emissions to almost half of their 1990 levels in the next fifteen years, the United States still hasn’t even come to a political agreement between Republican and Democrats if climate change is even real.

Decisions made in the next couple of decades by politicians and citizens around the world will determine if this “irreversible” deadline in going to be met with change or if we’ll be walking into 2100 different world than we are now.

3E Company and Locus Technologies Announce Strategic Collaboration

3E Company, a leading provider of environmental health and safety compliance and information management services, and Locus Technologies (Locus), a leading provider of cloud-based environmental compliance and EHS management software, announced a strategic collaboration today.

Link to Original Press Release

Alliance Combines 3E’s Product Safety Data and Global Regulatory Content with Locus Technologies’ Platform for Enhanced EHS Regulatory Compliance and Risk Management

Carlsbad, Calif., Oct 30, 2014 – (ACN Newswire) – 3E Company, a leading provider of environmental health and safety (EHS) compliance and information management services, and Locus Technologies (Locus), a leading provider of cloud-based environmental compliance and EHS management software, announced a strategic collaboration today. 3E Company is a Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK) business.

The alliance brings together 3E’s substance-level global regulatory content and product-level safety data sheet (SDS) data and Locus’s compliance and EHS software platform. The combined offering provides companies with a comprehensive, efficient, and affordable solution set for hazardous communication and workplace safety that can reduce risk and help streamline conformance with EHS regulations.

The collaboration highlights both companies’ respective strengths. These assets include 3E’s unique ability to research, source, aggregate, enrich, and maintain EHS compliance-related data and information and make it available in a customer-specific and easy-to-use format and Locus’s proven capability to build and maintain flexible, user-friendly software systems. Integrating 3E’s critical data with Locus’s software enables joint customers to manage EHS management and compliance obligations within a comprehensive cloud platform.

“As the industry-leading provider of EHS regulatory information and compliance management services, 3E has a diverse network of trusted companies with which we collaborate,” said Uday Virkud, president and CEO, 3E Company. “Our alliances with these companies enable our joint customers to better meet their regulatory and safety obligations. We’re delighted to collaborate with Locus and are confident that our customers will benefit from having seamless access to 3E’s data through Locus’s platforms.”

“We’re excited to offer our customers access to 3E data and to use the flexibility of our software platform to create an integrated solution with the industry’s most comprehensive and up-to-date data and content offering. This alliance stems out of Locus’s commitment to providing our customers with the most extensive tool set available to better manage their compliance and EHS requirements,” said Neno Duplan, president and CEO, Locus Technologies. “Collaborating with 3E offers our joint customers streamlined access to valuable data that can positively affect their compliance management strategies – improving their operations and data quality while reducing risk and associated costs.”

About 3E Company
3E Company, a Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK) business, offers a comprehensive suite of data and solutions for environmental health and safety (EHS) compliance management. This solutions suite addresses the entire chemical life cycle and includes regulatory research; SDS authoring, distribution, and management; transportation; emergency response; training; regulatory reporting; and hazardous waste management. 3E provides an industry-leading combination of a 24/7/365 EHS mission-control call center and the world’s premier hazardous substance database of global regulatory and compliance information. 3E was founded in 1988 and is headquartered in Carlsbad, California, with additional operations in Canton, Ohio; Bethesda, Maryland; Kingsport, Tennessee; Montreal, Quebec; and Copenhagen, Denmark. For more information on 3E Company, visit www.3ecompany.com.