Hawaii First Water

Largest water utility in Hawaii to save $56M through energy projects

October: Shimogawa: Pacific Business News.

An energy savings project being done by the Honolulu Board of Water Supply is expected to create 129 jobs, $42.7 million in household income and $3.4 million in state tax revenue during the next two decades, the water board said Monday.

During the 20-year period, the measures are expected to generate $56 million in energy savings.

In March, the semi-autonomous city agency reached an agreement on a $33 million contract with Noresco LLC on energy efficiency, renewable energy and operational improvements for the water board that guarantee enough energy savings during the next 20 years to pay for the contract.  Theproject’s goal is to reduce the water board’s annual electrical usage by about 8 million kilowatt-hours — 9 percent of its total purchased electricity.

This month, the largest water utility in the state is launching the first of a series of energy conservation measures, beginning with energy efficient light replacements, with additional measures such as solar photovoltaic systems being installed at 30 sites and energy efficient air conditioning upgrades at three of its facilities.

See the rest of the story on Hawaii Business Network here…

Kohala Ditch: A (Big Island) lifeline to North Kohala agriculture in the past, present and future

August 2016:

By Liz Nakayama, Special to West Hawaii Today.

For tourists, floating down the Kohala Ditch is a unique Hawaiian eco-tourism experience. But for locals, it has a rich history that connects the past and the present and provides hope for a sustainable future in Kohala. Efforts are now underway to ensure a long-term future operator for the ditch.

When the first North Kohala sugar plantation was founded in1864, there was a struggle to find enough water to grow the thirsty sugarcane. Inconsistent rain and withering trade winds often threatened the very existence of the six plantations operating in Kohala at the turn of the 20th century.

Hawi Plantation was particularly susceptible. Its owner, John Hind, spent years seeking a solution to the problem, finally finding an answer in the inaccessible canyons of Kohala Mountain. In 1904, Hind and his partners, J.T. McCrossan and Parker Ranch owner Sam Parker, incorporated the Kohala Ditch Company and hired the best engineers and surveyors of the day, along with hundreds of skilled laborers from Japan, to build the Kohala Ditch system.

Beginning in January 1905 with a starting budget of $600,000, multiple crews worked 24-hour days for 18 months to build it. Crews hand drilled through solid rock, blasted with dynamite and carved trails sometimes more than a thousand feet up the cliffs in Kohala, while fighting harsh terrain, bone-numbing chill, heavy rain, flooding, landslides and utter isolation in the remote wilderness. Seventeen men lost their lives in the effort.

Completed in June 1906, the system eventually expanded to 16 miles of tunnels, six miles of open ditches and 29 flumes. The irrigation doubled sugarcane production, increasing demand for employees, many who came from all over the world. Some families still on the island are descendants of those who originally came to Kohala to take part in the success brought by the ditch.

Although the last sugar plantation closed in 1975, the Kohala Ditch still supplies vital agricultural water to several dozen users in North Kohala, including a variety of farms, orchards, ranches, one of the largest dairies remaining in the state and even a small hydro-electric facility that sells renewable power to HELCO.

See the rest of the article here…

Hawaii Transforms Watershed Protection With Technology

11 Feb 2015, –Codi Kozacek,  Circle of Blue Reporter

HONOLULU, Hawaii– More than a hundred researchers and watershed managers packed into rows of plastic chairs at the Hawaii Association of Watershed Partnerships conference last Thursday. If I was expecting a run-of-the-mill recounting of water quality tests, I was pleasantly surprised. Instead, the meeting was proof that water management is moving into the realm of smart phones, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and camera systems originally designed for the Mars rovers.

See the article here…

Thirteen Things You Probably Don’t Know About the US Water System (But Should)

Posted by Charles Fishman in National Geographic Water Currents on August 12, 2014

It’s been a rough year for the U.S. water system already, and it’s only summer.

Two U.S. cities (Charleston, West Virginia, and Toledo, Ohio) have gone for days with no safe water service. The nation’s largest reservoir is lower than it’s ever been. The nation’s largest state is in the worst drought ever recorded.

Here are some statistics that sum up the condition of the U.S. water system, which in a word are not good.

• The U.S. has 1.2 million miles of water supply mains — 26 miles of water mains for every mile of interstate highway.

• The U.S. water system has become so old that, on average, every mile of water pipe suffers a break every six years.

• U.S. water pipes leak one full day’s water for every seven days. That is, U.S. water utilities lose one out of seven gallons of drinking water they supply before it arrives at a customer.

(Editor’s Note; On average, one pipe breaks daily in Honolulu due to the age of the water infrastructure)

• Many cities have centuries-long replacement cycles for their water pipes. Los Angeles and Philadelphia both have a 300-year replacement cycle.
Washington, D.C. has a 200-year water pipe replacement cycle.

• The water system is often out-of-date in surprising ways. In Sacramento, California’s capital, half the water customers have no water meters, so in the midst of the state’s worst drought in history, they pay a flat fee no matter how much water they use. In New York, the city’s largest apartment complex, Peter Cooper Village/Stuyvesant Town, has 11,232 units — and no water meters.

• The average water bill for a family of four in the U.S. is $34 a month—$1 a day.

• As recently as 1950, more than one-third of U.S. homes lacked indoor plumbing.

• Water circumstances change quickly and dramatically. Lake Mead, at 110 miles long the largest reservoir in the U.S., supplies 30 million people with water. In 2000, Lake Mead was virtually full. Today, it is only 39% full, lower than it has been since it was filled in May 1937.

• In the U.S., 8% of municipal water is cleaned and re-used. Singapore recycles 30% of its water. Israel recycles 70%.

• The largest use of water in the U.S. is for generating electric power. Power plants take 49% of the water used each day, mostly for cooling. Irrigation for agriculture is the second largest user of water at 31%. Piped water from utilities, for homes and businesses, is 11% of water use.

• Four states account for 25% of all water used in the U.S.: California, Texas, Idaho, Florida. (Two of those, California and Texas, are in the third year of serious drought.)

• Bottled water sales in the U.S. hit an all time high in 2013, when Americans bought 10 billion gallons. That’s 32 gallons of bottled water a year per person—equal to 5 half-liter bottles for every man, woman and child every week.

• Americans spent $25 billion on bottled water at retail in 2013. The country spent $29 billion maintaining the entire water infrastructure.

Charles Fishman is a journalist and author of The Big Thirst. Hear him on NPR.

HAWAII ENERGY, DLNR RELEASE TWO NEW HANDBOOKS

29 July 2014: State of Hawaii, DNLR – Two of Hawaii’s leading authorities on water conservation and energy efficiency jointly announce the distribution of two new handbooks written for Hawaii’s water and wastewater utilities that can help save up to 20 percent, or $16.1 million, in electricity costs annually – enough to power 9,400 homes in Hawaii.

Hawaii Energy, the ratepayer-funded energy conservation and efficiency program for Hawaii, Lanai, Maui, Molokai and Oahu, developed the Water & Wastewater Energy Management Best Practices Handbook to help water and wastewater facilities operate with increased energy efficiency.

The State of Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources’ (DLNR) Commission on Water Resource Management released the Hawaii Water System Audits and Water Loss Control Manual to assist all public water systems in Hawaii to assess their water supply efficiency through water audits and water loss programs.

Hawaii Energy’s Water & Wastewater Energy Management Best Practices Handbook

Water and energy usage are inextricably linked, referred to as the water-energy nexus, due to the significant energy required to transport and treat water and wastewater.

Based on a Hawaii Energy survey conducted in 2013, the state’s public water and wastewater systems consume an estimated 290.3 million kilowatt hours (kWh) per year, which is approximately 3.2 percent of the electric utilities’ total sales.

The generally accepted industry standard for water and wastewater facilities is that energy efficiency measures can generate 20 percent or more in energy savings. For Hawaii, the 20 percent potential savings translate to more than 58 million kWh per year (or $16.1 million) based on an average electricity rate of 28 cents per kWh.

“The handbook is another example of our commitment to increase the adoption of energy conservation and efficiency throughout Hawaii,” said Hawaii Energy Program Director Ray Starling. “The water and wastewater best practices have been proven effective in other parts of the country, are simple to follow and offer a wide spectrum of energy-efficient measures.”

It is written as a practical guide to help water and wastewater management personnel make informed decisions to reduce energy consumption in all aspects of facility operations, repair and investment. It outlines how to develop and assess an energy management program, implement capital and operational improvements to reduce energy usage and track energy performance.

The handbook provides an overview of each energy-efficient best practice and outlines the potential impact on productivity, the economic benefit and potential energy savings. Each practice is presented in a one-page format for easier readability and reference.

Portions of the handbook were developed with the permission of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and Wisconsin’s energy efficiency and renewable resource program, Focus on Energy.

Municipal and private regulated water and wastewater utilities provide service to 95 percent of Hawaii’s population. There are 206 regulated wastewater treatment facilities with a treatment capacity of more than 243 million gallons per day and an average daily flow of 121 million gallons, according to the state Department of Health.

The drinking water sector includes 130 regulated public water supply systems that consist of surface and ground water sources that produce approximately 260 million gallons per day, according to the State of Hawaii Annual Public Water System Compliance Report from 2010.

DLNR’s Hawaii Water System Audits and Water Loss Control Manual

DLNR’s Commission on Water Resource Management funded the development of the Hawaii Water System Audits and Water Loss Control Manual, which was prepared by the Hawaii Rural Water Association.

The commission acknowledged that a water utility’s energy bill is one of its largest operating expenses. By improving water system efficiency, the utility can prevent unnecessary waste, defer costs for new water source development and reduce energy bills.

“The majority of Hawaii’s drinking water comes from groundwater wells that require substantial amounts of electricity to pump out of the ground, into elevated storage reservoirs and then transported to customers,” explained William Tam, deputy director for the Commission on Water Resource Management. “If a lot of water is lost during this process, more energy is needed to pump additional water to compensate for the shortfall. Reducing water loss reduces energy consumption.”

The additional benefits of implementing water audits and water loss control programs include the following: increased knowledge of the water distribution system; reduced water loss by identifying problem/risk areas; efficient use of existing supplies; less legal liabilities and minimal service disruptions to customers.

The manual was developed based on the International Water Association’s (IWA) and the America Water Works Association’s (AWWA) “IWA/AWWA Water Audit Methodology.” The methodology was selected based on its research, industry acceptance, simplicity, adaptability and standardized performance indicators.

The manual was adopted from the Georgia Water System Audits and Loss Control Manual (September 2011, Version 1.0) with permission from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Georgia Environmental Protection Division and Georgia Watershed Protection Branch.

In April 2014, the commission conducted water audit training workshops in the four counties for drinking water utilities. Future workshops may be held based on interest. Water audits are not required in Hawaii. However, the commission is evaluating the implications of requiring water audits in the future.

Downloadable Versions
Hawaii Energy’s Water & Wastewater Energy Management Best Practices Handbook can be downloaded by visiting www.HawaiiEnergy.com/water-and-wastewater. For more information, call 839-8800 on Oahu or toll-free at (877) 231-8222 on the neighbor islands.

To download the Hawaii Water System Audits and Water Loss Control Manual, visit the commission’s water conservation website at www.dlnr.hawaii.gov/cwrm/planning/conservation.
For more information, call (808) 587-0214.

# # #

About Hawaii Energy
Hawaii Energy is the ratepayer-funded energy conservation and efficiency program administered by Leidos Engineering, LLC, under contract with the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, serving the islands of Hawaii, Lanai, Maui, Molokai and Oahu. Hawaii Energy offers cash rebates and other incentives to residents and businesses to help offset the cost of installing energy-efficient equipment. In addition to rebates, the program conducts education and training for residents, businesses and trade allies to encourage the adoption of energy conservation behaviors and efficiency measures. The program plays an important role in helping to achieve Hawaii’s goal of reducing total electric energy usage by 30 percent or 4.3 billion kWh by 2030. For more information, visit www.HawaiiEnergy.com.

The Commission on Water Resource Management
The Commission on Water Resource Management (Commission) administers the State Water Code, which was created by the 1987 Hawaii State Legislature. The commission’s general mission is to protect and enhance the water resources of the State of Hawaii through wise and responsible management. There are a total of seven members on the Commission.

The commission is attached to the State of Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources. Under the general direction of the Deputy Director for Water Resource Management, the staff provides administrative and technical support services to the Commission. The staff’s primary responsibilities are to implement and administer the provisions of the State Water Code by planning, surveying, regulating, monitoring, and conserving the state’s water resources within established plans that have been adopted by the commission. For more information, visit http://dlnr.hawaii.gov/cwrm.

Media contacts:

Rob Deveraturda
Hawaii Energy
(808) 839-8824
rob.deve@leidos.com

Deborah Ward
Department of Land and Natural Resources
(808) 587-0320
Deborah.L.Ward@hawaii.gov

no reason: A World on the Verge of Water Bankruptcy

Reaching the Epiphany Moment, Video Makes Water Crisis Clear

Can irony help explain the global fresh water crisis? no reason, a Circle of Blue video, describes in surprising images and unlikely pacing the roles water and water scarcity play in the global economy. It debuted at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland and was shown as United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon introduced the WEF’s water sessions.

“We took a different approach to illuminating the topic,” said Eric Daigh, the film’s producer. “In the video we step sideways and do something that connects with people in new ways. We all know how many people lack access to safe fresh water. We all know how many die each year from dirty water. But we need to have the epiphany moment, to grasp the interaction between water and agriculture, the economy, culture and conflict.”

 

See the Circle of Blue Video

Russian Hackers Threaten Power Companies, Researchers Say

(Editor Comment: This article is about hackers attacking electrical systems, but disruptions could easily be experienced in water systems for consumers as well as for mechanical systems such as cooling water.)

A Russian group of hackers known as “Energetic Bear” is attacking energy companies in the U.S. and Europe and may be capable of disrupting power supplies, cybersecurity researchers said.

The hackers, also called “Dragonfly,” appear to have the resources, size and organization that suggest government involvement, security company Symantec Corp. (SYMC) said in a blog post yesterday. The attackers are targeting grid operators, petroleum pipeline operators, electricity generation firms and other “strategically important” energy companies, it said.

Those group’s activities highlight the increasing reach of cyberattacks as ever-larger parts of the economy become connected and controlled via the Web. They may also be symptomatic of governments using hacking to support political strategies. More than half of the infections found were in the U.S. and Spain, Symantec said, while Serbia, Greece, Romania, Poland, Turkey, Germany, Italy and France were also targeted.

The hackers, who have been active since at least 2011, appeared to work a standard week, operating 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, in a time zone shared by Russia and other eastern European countries, Symantec said.

The group has a “nexus to the Russian Federation,” according to report published in January by Irvine, California-based CrowdStrike, which focuses on identifying web “adversaries.” The hackers also targeted academics globally, European governments, defense contractors and U.S. health-care providers, it said. Helsinki-based security firm F-Secure Oyj noticed the group’s focus shifting to industrial control systems earlier this year, according to a June 23 blog post.

State Question

It’s unclear whether a state is directly involved or if the group is trying to sell to a government, Eric Chien, chief researcher at Symantec’s Security Technology and Response Team, said in an interview.

“The Dragonfly group is well resourced, with a range of malware tools at its disposal and is capable of launching attacks through a number of different vectors,” Symantec said. “These infections not only gave attackers a beachhead in the targeted organizations’ networks, but also gave them the means to mount sabotage operations.”

“When they do have that type of access, that motivation wouldn’t be for espionage,” Chien said. “When we look at where they’re at, we’re very concerned about sabotage.”

Symantec started actively monitoring Dragonfly’s activities in 2012, when the attacks only looked like espionage, Chien said. Some of the group’s malware infiltrates remote access software used by energy companies, giving attackers the same privileges as an industrial control system.

Siemens Software

Cyber-spies are targeting utility companies all over the world. Dragonfly’s tactics are similar to the Stuxnet attacks, a computer virus that was found to target Iranian nuclear facilities in 2010, Symantec said. That malware targeted software made by Siemens AG, among others.

The FBI discovered a Chinese hacker, called UglyGorilla, seeking access to parts of a U.S. utility company’s systems that would let him cut off heat or damage pipelines. He and others working for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army were indicted by a U.S. grand jury in May for computer fraud and economic espionage.

Other incursions have spurred a debate in the Obama administration over whether and how to respond, and raised alarms among lawmakers briefed on the incidents.

“The worst-case scenario would be that the systems get shut down,” Chien said. “You could see the power go out, for example, and there could be disruption in that sense.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Amy Thomson in London at athomson6@bloomberg.net; Cornelius Rahn in Berlin at crahn2@bloomberg.net

Stanford Breakthrough Provides Picture of Underground Water

June 17, 2014

By Rob Jordan (Stanford University)

Stanford scientists prove that satellite-collected data can accurately measure aquifer levels, a finding with potentially huge implications for management of precious global water sources.

Superman isn’t the only one who can see through solid surfaces. In a development that could revolutionize the management of precious groundwater around the world, Stanford researchers have pioneered the use of satellites to accurately measure levels of water stored hundreds of feet below ground. Their findings were published recently in Water Resources Research.

Groundwater provides 25 to 40 percent of all drinking water worldwide, and is the primary source of freshwater in many arid countries, according to the National Groundwater Association. About 60 percent of all withdrawn groundwater goes to crop irrigation. In the United States, the number is closer to 70 percent. In much of the world, however, underground reservoirs or aquifers are poorly managed and rapidly depleted due to a lack of water-level data. Developing useful groundwater models, availability predictions and water budgets is very challenging.

Study co-author Rosemary Knight, a professor of geophysics with the School of Earth Sciences and senior fellow, by courtesy, at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, compared groundwater use to a mismanaged bank account: “It’s like me saying I’m going to retire and live off my savings without knowing how much is in the account.”

Lead author Jessica Reeves, a postdoctoral scholar in geophysics, extended Knight’s analogy to the connection among farmers who depend on the same groundwater source. “Imagine your account was connected to someone else’s account, and they were withdrawing from it without your knowing.”

Until now, the only way a water manager could gather data about the state of water tables in a watershed was to drill monitoring wells. The process is time and resource intensive, especially for confined aquifers, which are deep reservoirs separated from the ground surface by multiple layers of impermeable clay. Even with monitoring wells, good data is not guaranteed. Much of the data available from monitoring wells across the American West is old and of varying quality and scientific usefulness. Compounding the problem, not all well data is openly shared.

To solve these challenges, Reeves, Knight, Stanford Woods Institute-affiliated geophysics and electrical engineering Professor Howard Zebker, Stanford civil and environmental engineering Professor Peter Kitanidis and Willem Schreüder of Principia Mathematica Inc. looked to the sky.

The basic concept: Satellites that use electromagnetic waves to monitor changes in the elevation of Earth’s surface to within a millimeter could be mined for clues about groundwater. The technology, Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), had previously been used primarily to collect data on volcanoes, earthquakes and landslides.

With funding from NASA, the researchers used InSAR to make measurements at 15 locations in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, an important agricultural region and flyway for migrating birds. Based on observed changes in Earth’s surface, the scientists compiled water-level measurements for confined aquifers at three of the sampling locations that matched the data from nearby monitoring wells.

“If we can get this working in between wells, we can measure groundwater levels across vast areas without using lots of on-the-ground monitors,” Reeves said.

The breakthrough holds the potential for giving resource managers in Colorado and elsewhere valuable data as they build models to assess scenarios such as the effect on groundwater from population increases and droughts.

Just as computers and smartphones inevitably get faster, satellite data will only improve. That means more and better data for monitoring and managing groundwater. Eventually, InSAR data could play a vital role in measuring seasonal changes in groundwater supply and help determine levels for sustainable water use.

In the meantime, Knight envisions a Stanford-based, user-friendly online database that consolidates InSAR findings and a range of other current remote sensing data for soil moisture, precipitation and other components of a water budget. “Very few, if any, groundwater managers are tapping into any of the data,” Knight said. With Zebker, postdoctoral fellow Jingyi Chen and colleagues at the University of South Carolina, Knight recently submitted a grant proposal for this concept to NASA.

By Rob Jordan, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment

(LK Comment: Such technology could be useful in the Hawaiian Islands to help to quantify the islands’ aquifer capabilities)

Opportunities for Synergies in Water and Energy Infrastructure

(Asian Water Magazine: April 2014)

An array of opportunities exists to co-produce energy and water services and to exploit the benefits of synergies.  However, the current political and economic incentive system favors independent sectoral outcomes over cross sectional results.  Sustainable solutions require a systems approach of integrated solutions rather than addressing issues in isolation.

Water and energy issues should be addressed holistically, as the optimal solution for one can have negative impacts on the other. Such common solutions can be achieved only if there is communication between sectors, and if the right incentives are in place. In addition to new technical solutions, new political and economic frameworks need to be designed to promote cooperation among sectors and integrated planning.

For example, given the different uses of dams, hydropower sustainability can be improved through integrated water and energy planning and management. Most thermal power plants require large amount of water to dissipate the excess produced heat (“waste heat”) to the environment. Therefore, the siting of power plants should take into account their interaction with water resources, water facilities and other sectors that compete for water supplies. There are also ways to utilize waste heat and thus decrease the amount of water needed for cooling as explained in the examples below.

Wastewater treatment plants can generate energy from sludge produced at the plant. Another opportunity to mitigate nexus trade offs is to improve water and energy efficiency and conservation. Improving efficiency in the water domain saves energy for treatment and supply and therefore reduces the amount of water needed by the power sector. When the power sector shifts towards a more efficient operation, less water is used as less waste heat will have to be dissipated.

Thus, policies and integrated plans that encourage energy and water conservation can reduce future energy and water requirements.

see full article at www.asianwater.com.my/

 

 

Downstream Thinking: National and Regional Trends in Green Infrastructure

By Anna McGeehan, Environmental Finance Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, April 2014

“We all live downstream.” In the world of stormwater management, this concept is particularly relevant. Polluted waterways have far-reaching impacts for us all. Increased flooding, higher water treatment costs, strain on existing infrastructure, beach closures, and decreased biodiversity all pose significant and costly threats to communities, towns, cities, and states.

Green Infrastructure (GI), an alternative to traditional urban growth designs, is receiving considerable attention as a cost-effective way to reduce pollution, manage stormwater runoff, improve water quality, and maximize infrastructure investments. GI is an affordable mitigation strategy that uses a variety of techniques, such as native vegetation, rain gardens, bioswales, or porous pavement, to add unique aesthetic value to new or revitalized development site. The EFC’s comprehensive catalog of over 50 GI publications highlights several cities that are leading the country through their use of innovative, comprehensive, and effective GI strategies.

http://efc.web.unc.edu/2014/04/04/downstream-thinking-national-regional-trends-green-infrastructure/#more-2720