Envisioning a Secure Water Future

Dan McCarthy, President and CEO of Black & Veatch’s Global Water Business

Problem: A Water Emergency in the Making

Sustainable planning for a secure water future is no longer a regionally isolated challenge. Global trends in water scarcity and watershed management force water industry leaders to take a long view – and a broad view – of the future. Population and economic growth, water quality degradation, legal influences, climate change, supply deficiencies -- these major trends are interacting in complex ways to create water scarcity issues in a growing number of regions around the world.
Arid and semi-arid regions of the world are already confronting this challenge, but many other communities are increasingly aware of the need for proactive planning approaches to manage water supply issues. In the face of uncertainty in climatic trends and population projections, sound sustainable planning approaches -- and a clear understanding of the global business of water -- are essential to our planet's secure water future.

The real issue, however, isn’t just about having clean, safe, high-quality drinking water. Sustainability is about having enough for all uses and re-uses. To address that goal, we as industry leaders have to make changes to adapt to the changes. Bio-capacity is being reduced due to growing demand for the earth’s natural resources, so we need to create relevant services to offer our clients in order to help them respond. We must look for ways to mitigate these impacts and find environmentally responsible ways of doing business.

To deal with these changes – and effect change – we as industry leaders need to focus on strategic, sustainable planning and sustainable design. Many of us in the industry have spent the last decade focused on implementation, moving from design to design build; now we find ourselves at the other end of the service value chain, looking at the planning process and consolidating our water and energy expertise to help clients create a multi-decade roadmap.
The pressures of population growth and economic development will lead us to emphasize alternative energy sources – such as tidal and wave, hydroelectric or other renewable energy like bio-mass/bio-diesel – as well as alternative water supplies.

Solution: A New Age of Infrastructure

The focus on sustainability isn’t a trend or a passing fancy – it’s the future. Our future. It’s not a fad but a fundamental change. We are now in the new age of infrastructure. It’s an age of “what if?” and “how?” questions:

• What if droughts become more frequent or widespread or intense and what if the cycle between droughts shortens? How does that affect our holistic approach to water master planning?
• What if the sea level does rise? How does that affect our coastal planning and setting elevations and hydraulic criteria?
• What if this results in salt water intrusion into freshwater estuaries or ground water systems? How will we deal with that impact?
• What if rainfall – or snowfall for that matter – becomes more intense than it has been historically? How does that affect CSO and SSO design criteria or the size of water supply impounding reservoirs or flood protection criteria?
• What if these more intense storms have a greater impact than expected on flooding and water quality criteria in water supply? How will we account for this range of conditions in our designs?
• What if these changes are not temporary but permanent? How do our engineering approaches and offerings and solution sets need to change so that the industry is leading the way instead of following behind?

Historical approaches to traditional design and planning techniques are no longer valid. Our clients’ perspectives are shifting, and in today’s marketplace, recognition is growing that we’ll need massive investment in the new age of infrastructure.

It’s not sufficient to just envision a secure water future. To ensure we have enough clean, safe water for today, tomorrow and two hundred years from now, we need a cooperative approach to make it happen. We can’t just talk about it…we need to be an industry of action. Now.