ZDNet | Water, logged: Software now calculates water footprint

One of the developers in the environmental compliance management software space, Locus Technologies, has added the ability to track water footprint-related information.

Water Footprint

Locus cloud-based software offers the solution for the complex problem of footprinting water quality

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., May 24, 2010 — In response to international recognition of the need for industry to increase its water reporting efforts, Locus Technologies (Locus), leader in cloud-based environmental compliance and information management software, has expanded its award winning Environmental Information Management (EIM) software to include water quality footprinting capabilities for businesses.

EIM’s expanded functionality enables companies to manage and organize their water quality data on a larger and more comprehensive scale using cloud-based computing and storage, thus avoiding the need to buy additional environmental software or store the same data in more than one location. And, Locus’ innovative enterprise software model employs mashups — applications that integrate data or functionality from multiple sources or technologies — offering the potential to completely upend the way a corporation manages its water data.

There is little dispute in both scientific and business communities that water shortages represent a worldwide challenge no less important than climate change. Water is a finite resource, growing in scarcity as the world’s population explodes. The worldwide water shortage is acute — less than three percent of the world’s water supply is drinking water. In addition, there is one notable difference between water and air emissions. Any emission of unwanted gases into the air can be almost instantly remediated by cutting off the source. However, any gases that have escaped cannot be recaptured to be remediated. In contrast, water that is contaminated frequently can be treated, but the process is generally lengthy, costly, and energy-intensive. Once contaminated, water needs to be monitored until cleaned. Water is vital and its value varies according to locality, use, and conditions.

Over the last 15 years, Locus has focused on water quality and related issues. The company has a world-class team of experts with deep domain knowledge in this field. Locus’ flagship application EIM is successfully deployed at thousands of sites worldwide and contains organized water quality information at millions of locations. Existing regulations require monitoring and reporting of both groundwater and surface water contamination from various industrial processes, spills, and other releases. Until recently, such voluminous data was kept mainly to comply with regulatory reporting requirements regarding effluents and contamination.

However, governments and other voluntary reporting organizations such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the non-profit Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) are shifting their focus from compliance-based monitoring and reporting of effluents to reporting on the scarcity and quality of drinking water supplies, in effect monitoring the “water footprint” required of industry, agriculture, and manufacturing. The water accounting is the next big challenge for business.

CDP late last year launched its Water Disclosure initiative, seeking to increase reporting on water-related risks and opportunities, especially by companies operating in water-intensive sectors. CDP Water Disclosure will provide critical water-related data from the world’s largest corporations to inform the global market place on investment risk and commercial opportunity.

The total volume of freshwater used by a business defines its water quantity footprint. Water quantity footprints are measured in terms of volume of water consumed and/or contaminated per unit of time and are relatively easy to calculate. Such is not the case for water quality footprints, which require analyzing water samples for a potentially endless number of chemical parameters that define water quality in accordance with various regulatory standards such as the Clean Water Act. The amount and quantity of data generated in this process is staggering and unmanageable without sophisticated software tools, such as EIM provides.

“Water management issues represent a potentially huge area of risk for business. Reducing one’s water footprint should be part of the environmental strategy of a business, just like reducing one’s carbon footprint or energy usage already is. Our customers have traditionally focused on meeting emission standards associated with releases to water, air, and soil,” said Dr. Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus.

“Meeting emission standards for compliance purposes is one thing, but looking at how effluents’ management actually results in lower risk, reduced energy consumption, improved operational efficiency, and ultimately an improved bottom line is another thing. Leaders who create water quality transparency for their companies before others do, and who formulate specific and measurable targets with respect to water footprint reduction, can turn this into a competitive advantage and Locus software can help them do that,” continued Duplan.

EPA Calls for Stricter Drinking-Water Standards

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is planning to tighten standards for four water contaminants that can cause cancer as part of a new strategy to toughen drinking-water regulation.

EPA said it will start rulemakings to revise standards for two contaminants used in industrial or textile processing, tetracholorethylene and trichloroethylene, within the year. The EPA will follow that rulemaking by setting stricter standards for epichlorohydrin and acrylamide, which can contaminate drinking water through the water-treatment process.
Speaking at a conference of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said her agency is now developing a broad new set of strategies to strengthen public health protection from contaminants in drinking water.

“To confront emerging health threats, strained budgets and increased needs—today’s and tomorrow’s drinking water challenges—we must use the law more effectively and promote new technologies,” she said.

Ms. Jackson said the agency would now address contaminants as a group rather than individually, saying the current process is too time-consuming and fails to take advantage of cost-effective programs and technology. She said the EPA would also help to foster new technologies, use existing laws more stringently and partner with states to share data from public-water systems.

The agency is also assessing 14 other contaminants, including law and copper, chromium, fluoride, arsenic, atrazine and perchlorate.

Congress to investigate hydraulic fracturing for concerns about potential drinking-water contamination

WSJ reported today that concerns about potential drinking-water contamination are prompting Congress to investigate hydraulic fracturing, a controversial drilling technique that has helped boost U.S. natural-gas production. Hydrofracturing has been used by the oil industry for decades but has become far more common in recent years as companies discovered large new gas fields  in the US. The resulting drilling boom helped U.S. gas production surge by about 20% since 2005, but sparked concerns that chemicals from the process could seep into drinking-water supplies.

“As we use this technology in more parts of the country on a much larger scale, we must ensure that we are not creating new environmental and public health problems,” Mr. Waxman, chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, said in a statement.

The industry beleives that hydrofracturing is safe and with proper tools like Locus EIM water quality management software can prove that hydrofracturing can be managed to protect groundwater resources. Now, more than ever, a proper water quality management tools are necessary to address skeptics and prove that hydraulic fracturing is not linked to large scale drinking water contamination.  It is almost certain that EPA will legislate this technology and require better monitoring and reporting.

ZDNet GreenTech Pastures | Locus adds water module to environment software application portfolio

Water management problems capture more attention from environmental technology player Locus.

Locus Adds Cost Cutting Tool to EIM Software

New EIM tool, LTMO, helps customers reduce groundwater well monitoring

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., November 23, 2009 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based environmental software, announced today the release of its Long Term Monitoring Optimization (LTMO) software that helps customers cut the cost of groundwater remediation projects. LTMO is built-in to EIM, Locus’ web-based application for managing sampling, analytical and geological data associated with environmental projects.

Long term monitoring of contaminated groundwater is one of the biggest costs of many environmental projects, often requiring that hundreds or more wells be sampled at regular intervals, with each sample event costing hundreds of dollars. Over time, changes in site conditions may mean the number of sampled wells or the frequency of sampling can be reduced. A number of analytical tools and approaches exist to identify redundant wells and pinpoint opportunities for sampling and monitoring reductions. MAROS (Monitoring And Remediation Optimization System) software application, developed by the Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment, is one of the most popular of these tools. With the LTMO tool, Locus has incorporated many of the techniques and methodologies of MAROS, including trend analyses and the Delaunay triangulation method.

The Locus EIM LTMO tool offers several distinct advantages over MAROS and other existing stand-alone or spreadsheet-based applications that perform similar analyses. First of all, there is no need to export data in a special format to another application. All analyses are performed under the umbrella of EIM. Secondly, robust integrated Web 2.0 graphical tools and reports provide a wealth of options for examining the results of the analyses, including extensive backup data that can be supplied to regulatory agencies as needed. Finally, the results of any analysis can be saved and easily pulled up for review or modification.

“We expect the incorporation of the LTMO tool into EIM to be extremely beneficial to our large enterprise customers that have thousands of groundwater sites. Instead of the analyses being performed on the desktops of their many consultants, long-term groundwater management data resides in a single, central, web-accessible database. LTMO is a very powerful tool that significantly reduces the cost of long term stewardship of groundwater contaminated sites,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus.

“The recent $11 billion bill passed to fix California’s water infrastructure includes a provision for mandatory monitoring of the state’s groundwater, which is often used during times of drought and is most vulnerable to contamination. From the onset of the new bill, Locus’ LTMO tool will be there to help industry and government to optimize groundwater monitoring programs,” added Duplan.

Contact Locus today for a demonstration of this exciting new feature and see how Locus EIM can help you reduce your long-term sampling and analytical costs.

Focus on Water: Who will disclose to CDP Water Disclosure?

What I have noticed missing from the dialogues on climate change is discussion on water and water quality as it relates to carbon emissions. Oil industry, for example, consumes and contaminates huge quantities of water and newer hydro fracturing technologies indicated more is on the way. Water management is a significant part of carbon management and translates directly into tones of GHG. It is also 100+ years problem (unlike air contamination). Most of companies have no established methods for water and groundwater accounting. Some progressive oil companies have made first steps in this direction and are quantifying their (dirty) water footprint. In my recent discussion with executives from several large companies it appears nobody wants to touch this subject.  Yet, this is unavoidable issue that will move into the center stage as soon as GHG bubble bursts. Here is some interesting statistics on groundwater:

  • 22% of all freshwater withdrawals
  • 37% of agricultural use (mostly for irrigation)
  • 37% of the public water supply withdrawals
  • 51% of all drinking water for the total population (US)
  • 99% of drinking water for the rural population (US)

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Source: 2005 United States Geological Survey (USGS)

Water is often undervalued and wasted – the OECD forecasts that 47% of world population will be living in areas of high water stress by 2030 unless new policies are introduced. Water, like climate change, is set to be a key issue for the 21st century. It is through water that the impacts of climate change are most likely to be felt, with changing patterns of precipitation and melting glaciers affecting the supply of this critical resource. At the same time population growth, urbanization and rising per capita consumption are expected to result in rapidly increasing demand for water. Businesses will be impacted positively and negatively, and will have a significant role to play in developing and implementing solutions to the water challenge. At present, however, awareness and understanding of water-related risks and opportunities is generally limited in the business and investment communities.  For that reason, CDP initiated the Water Disclosure project.

Here are some other compiled facts on water from various sources:

  • Less than 1% of the world’s fresh water (or about 0.007% of all water on earth) is readily accessible for direct human use.
  • 3.575 million People die each year from water-related disease. •
  • 84% of water-related deaths are in children ages 0 – 14.
  • 98% of water-related deaths occur in the developing world.
  • 884 million people, lack access to safe water supplies, approximately one in eight people.
  • The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.
  • At any given time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a water-related disease.
  • An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than the typical person living in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.
  • There are over 2 million known contaminated sites in the US. 80% of them have contaminated groundwater.
  • About a third of people without access to an improved water source live on less than $1 a day. More than two thirds of people without an improved water source live on less than $2 a day.
  • Poor people living in the slums often pay 5-10 times more per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city. • Without food a person can live for weeks, but without water you can expect to live only a few days.
  • The daily requirement for sanitation, bathing, and cooking needs, as well as for assuring survival, is about 13.2 gallons per person.
  • Over 50 percent of all water projects fail and less than five percent of projects are visited, and far less than one percent have any longer-term monitoring.

California Passes $11B Water Deal

California passed a bill to fix our water infrastructure. This is the most comprehensive water infrastructure package in the history of California. And this is an $11 billion package that will be leveraged against an additional $30 billion that will be asked by the state’s voters next November in bonds to help finance new infrastructure and water ecosystem restoration, especially in places like the delta. That is altogether a $41 billion project.

In a series of bills that cleared the Legislature in largely bipartisan votes early Wednesday after all-night sessions, California’s water supply would be guaranteed through steps such as mandatory monitoring of groundwater reserves and expanded conservation.
“Without clean, reliable water, we cannot build, we cannot farm, we cannot grow and we cannot prosper,” said Mr. Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California.

An important part of the bill is a compromise that was reached on the issue of mandatory monitoring of the state’s groundwater supplies, which are often used during times of drought and are most vulnerable to contamination. Many Democrats wanted the monitoring, which has been optional, done by the state, if local agencies failed to do it. But some Republicans insisted the monitoring be handled locally to help allay fears among some water agencies of too much state intrusion. Under the deal, local agencies will do the monitoring.

Locus is very pleased with the outcome of this bill as it addresses groundwater monitoring and water quality management. Locus’ EIM SaaS water quality management software is market leader in this space with thousands of sites already using it to manage their groundwater quality.

ZDNet GreenTech Pastures | Seeing is believing: Locus Technologies environmental software helps visualize the impact

If seeing is believing, then we could all benefit from more environmental software applications like the one sold by Locus Technologies. You input your data once; it visualizes the impact.