ISE Research: Sustainable Water Management
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The BU ISE team’s research focuses on approaches to overcome the environmental, legal, financial, and demographic barriers to sustainable water management, and to maintain affordability of water. We have worked in Texas and identified opportunities for utilities to integrate One Water strategies into urban water management, including considering demand management and incorporating new approaches to water rate-making to promote affordability and water conservation while managing utility revenue.
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Item Scenarios, sustainability, and critical infrastructure risk mitigation in water planning(Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy, 2020-10) Jermain, DavidThis paper examines the state of water supply planning facing unprecedented challenges for ensuring reliable, resilient, safe, and affordable water supplies in Texas and throughout the US. Analysis of water planning methods and practices reveals a robustly sophisticated quantitative modeling capability. Its focus is on both near-term and long-term capital investment requirements and managing operating costs. Water planning focuses on drought mitigation and flood risk management as predominant concerns. But climate change is impacting whole watersheds as well as water systems subject to sea level rise incursions that disrupt wastewater systems. Significant cross-impacts between energy and water add new risks to both energy and water infrastructure, with uncertainties still difficult to robustly quantify. Energy-water nexus issues reflect deeper planning challenges concerning critical infrastructures. Critical infrastructure planning tends to be sectoral-specific even though interdependencies and cross impacts can create broadly impactful cascade effects. Future-state water planning should be done in the context of critical infrastructure planning. Both will benefit from integrating qualitative scenario planning into established quantitative planning models. Doing so expands the complexity that can be captured in planning while providing narratives and using decision-making and public communications tools.Item Water planning in an age of change(Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy, 2020-10) Jermain, DavidThis review paper examines a variety of methodologies that underpin current water planning in the United States – spanning the city, state, and Federal scales – and identifies ways in which changing realities and greater interdependencies between various different critical infrastructures are driving the need for new water planning approaches and processes. Specifically, new sources of uncertainty and their implications are examined, and challenges relating to water supply, allocation, decision making, safety and security, and the information and processes of planning are delineated. In this context, the usefulness of adding scenario planning to current water planning processes is assessed, and ways in which it can be implemented effectively are described. Opportunities for One Water planning to be augmented by critical infrastructure planning and enhanced risk mitigation are also discussed. Recommendations are articulated that are relevant to states, cities, and utility agencies, in order to ensure that they are more resiliently prepared for a substantially more uncertain planning environment in the future, with particular attention to critical infrastructure for water and for other services and the interrelationships between them.Item Sustainable water management: ratemaking & affordability(Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy, 2020-06) Grinshpun, MichaelThe U.S. is suffering a crisis of affordability, especially among low-income and marginalized communities. One portion of the affordability crisis has received disproportionately little effort and attention—the cost of water and sanitation services. In Measuring and Addressing Water and Waste Water Affordability in the U.S., ISE provides: - A more comprehensive set of metrics to measure the scope of the affordability problem in the U.S. - An affordability assessment tool for decision-makers. - Recommendations for how different stakeholders can take action to address affordability using the insights from this new set of affordability metrics.Item One Water demand management: rethinking ratemaking(Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy, 2020-06) Grinshpun, Michael; Benzaoui, Josef; Ashmore, JacquelineMany cities in the U.S. are experiencing population growth, causing water demand to grow and straining existing water supplies and infrastructure. Demand management offers opportunities for water utility rate structures to support the One Water approach, also known as integrated water management. ISE’s analysis in One Water Demand Management: Rethinking Ratemaking: - Helps water utilities to assess the interplay between ratemaking, water demand, and water conservation. - Advances consideration of equity for low-income customers in the new rate structure presented. - Presents a new rate structure case study for New Braunfels Utilities (NBU) in Texas to simultaneously increase revenue, encourage water demand management, and maintain equity.Item Water utility of the future: a case study of conservation as a service(Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy, 2019-10) Grinshpun, Michael; Ashmore, Jacqueline; Benzaoui, JosefINTRODUCTION: Water utilities serving growing populations in dry climates face challenges in balancing increasing water demand with scarce supplies. New water supply sources are increasingly expensive and require construction of additional infrastructure for treatment and delivery. This poses a challenge for utilities to balance revenues and costs to remain financially viable. As a result, water utilities may face a difficult choice. If the utility chooses to develop new water supplies, they will have to increase their rates. However, they can also choose to assess alternative supply and demand management strategies to match revenues with the increasing marginal costs. Approaches such as water reuse, rainwater or condensate harvesting or harnessing other alternative sources are becoming increasingly widespread. Nonetheless, it is important to continuously assess and implement demand conservation programs, which often prove relatively quick, low-cost and straightforward to implement. [TRUNCATED]Item One Water strategies for New Braunfels Utilities(Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy, 2019-01) Ashmore, Jacqueline; Benzaoui, Josef; Grinshpun, MichaelINTRODUCTION: In February of 2017, Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy (ISE) and the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation (CGMF) initiated a multi-year project that aims to understand how water utilities in Texas cities can apply the principles of One Water to address the challenges of increasing urban populations, supply changes, and aging water infrastructure. Since summer 2018, the ISE team has engaged with New Braunfels Utility (NBU) to understand the opportunities relating to One Water for them as a mid-size utility serving a rapidly growing population. The One Water paradigm spans potable water, wastewater, and storm water, and considers opportunities for water sourcing, treatment, and use holistically. Discussions around One Water often focus on supply side strategies, such as how water reuse or rainwater harvesting can provide alternate sources of water. However, demand management and water conservation also play a role in One Water by promoting sustainability, resilience, and reducing the need for additional gray infrastructure. Ultimately, NBU may explore many strategies related to One Water. We chose to focus on demand reduction due to the utility’s concern over potentially large increases in New Braunfels’ water demand in the coming years. The ISE team analyzed meter-level data and also pumping data from NBU. We benchmarked NBU water demand, analyzed the demand by type of account, and identified the demand distribution by account. The findings led us to revisit projections of future water demand and generate a new demand projection that suggests demand growth may be slower than previously anticipated. While NBU’s supplies are more than sufficient to meet projected demand through 2030, there are other benefits to effective demand management and water conservation practices. Consequently, ISE developed recommendations for a targeted outreach program to high consumers and to promote rebates to developers. We also drafted ordinance revisions related to watering violations.Item Integrated urban water management in Texas: a review to inform a one water approach for the future(Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy, 2018-04) Ashmore, Jacqueline; Cherne-Hendrick, Margaret; Marttin, VictorTexas has considerable experience grappling with historic droughts as well as flooding associated with tropical storms and hurricanes, yet the State’s water management challenges are projected to increase. Urban densification, increased frequency and severity of droughts and floods, aging infrastructure, and a management system that is not reflective of the true cost of water all influence water risk. Integrated urban water management strategies, like ‘One Water’, represent an emerging management paradigm that emphasizes the interconnectedness of water throughout the water cycle and capitalizes on opportunities that arise from this holistic viewpoint. Here, we review water management practices in five Texas cities and examine how the One Water approach could represent a viable framework to maintain a reliable, sustainable, and affordable water supply for the future. We also examine financial and business models that establish a foundational pathway towards the ‘utility of the future’ and the One Water paradigm more broadly.