Opening a Can of Worms?

Wow, one headline really caught my eye this week: "Canada and US to Renegotiate Great Lakes Water Treaty." Of course, like most non-alarmist news articles, this one seemed to slip under the radar of most mainstream media outlets. Even the one source I saw it in barely gave it more than a few paragraphs, and half of that was off-topic on passport and free-trade issues. And while that in itself shows how important most people see this as, the rewriting of this treaty does have the potential for some pretty significant impact on water usage in the Great Lakes Basin, not to mention set a potentially powerful precedent for cross-border water negotiations in the future. To put you in the right frame of mind, here are a few tidbits to chew on*:

1) The Great Lakes Basin Watershed is the largest freshwater system on the planet
2) It contains an estimated 6 quadrillion gallons of freshwater. Or in other terms: about 1/5th of the world's freshwater, and 90-95% of the US supply.
3) The lakes have approx. 17,549km of shoreline. This is equal to 44% of the circumference of the Earth.
4) The population within the Great Lakes Basis is approx. 35 million people.
5) It is not only a major water source for those 35 million people, but is a critical economic pathway - a major transportation and shipping link.
6) Despite its size, it is a fragile ecosystem that needs to be protected, and hence this treaty NEEDS to be re-evaluated.

The original treaty has just celebrated its centennial, and so the issues that formed its inception have obviously matured. If you live in the region or have read any of the books on water related risks, or even seen the documentaries that reference issues in the region, you may be familiar with some of the stories that have come from the region. There is the story about the bottling company that has pumped so much water out of the watershed (and shipped the water away) that nearby wells and creeks have run dry. There is the story about tankers looking to fill directly from the lakes to ship the water to Asia for bottled markets there. There are stories about proposed pipelines to expand the distribution of the lake water - that 35 million people could grow drastically if this option takes hold.

Sitting here today, I don't know which players will be at the table renegotiating this treaty, but is it critical that the watershed management, the protection of both the quality and quantity of the water, be at the forefront. Should the discussion fall into a battle of who has more rights to the water, it will spell trouble for everyone involved, on both sides of the border, and both sides of the industry/consumer coin. The only way to maintain the interests of all involved is to maintain the integrity of the watershed itself. Watershed management in ANY watershed is a tough balancing act, but with the focus on such a massive cross-border area, the complexity is sure to skyrocket. I will be following the development of this with much interest. Now if only the media would do the same.

To see the article, in all of its brevity: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/06/13/boundary-waters.html. * Some facts taken from: http://www.great-lakes.net/

Are we behind the 8 ball in North America?

I've spent this week in Penticton, BC exhibiting at two industry tradeshows conveniently held back-to-back in the same convention hall: The Canadian Hospital Engineering Society (CHES) and the School Plant Officials Association (SPOA). Though we carry a very wide range of products that could conceivably make it onto our table for these two industries, we decided to focus on a growing problem in commercial and industrial buildings across North America including, but certainly not limited to, hospitals and schools. While it is by no means a new problem, it is one that is slowly coming to light - degrading mechanical systems.

It's no surprise that water-borne contaminants can wreck havoc in all kinds of circles, but often non-health related contamintants are ignored for the more immediate bacteria concerns. While no one stands to get sick from these problems, we do stand to spend an awful lot of money on fixing them! The most common example of this is particulate matter - dirt, rust, sand, sediment, silt (call it what you want), algae, etc. all have serious implications for the performance, or more appropriately, the failure of every piece of mechanical equipment you can think of. How well do you think pump seals, mixing valves, control valves, toilet tank valves, showerheads, automatic flush valves, etc. etc. etc. hold up to large loads of dirt? Easy answer - not very well!

It is incredible how much money is being spent on an annual basis, year after year after year, to just keep up with the failures that are seen from poor incoming water quality. And in North America, it seems to be accepted as normal practice. A common thought I hear is that "well, there's nothing we can do about the water the city gives us." Wrong! Well, sort of wrong. True, we can't change what comes in from the pipe to our building, but we can choose to deal with it before we pass that water throughout our entire distribution and plumbing network. What am I talking about? Simple filtration!

There are certain parts of the world where plumbing code strives to be more of a "best practice" rather than just the bare minimum, which seems to be the driving force in North America. For example, there exist inexpensive, easy to operate filtration systems (think of an automatic, self-cleaning strainer) that can be installed at the point-of-entry to commercial buildings that can handle flow rates up over 900 GPM to solve these problems.

Not even a month ago I was in a commercial building commissioning a system on a refridgeration loop. Turns out that from years of use, there was nearly a half bucket load of sand sitting in the pipes on the lower levels. Now this is the city of Vancouver, BC water supply - all in all an excellent water supply. However, we do tend to see high turbidity from time to time, especially during heavy rainfalls. Fortunately the filtration system we were starting up was specifically designed to remove that dirt before throwing it all right back into the distribution system in one big "slug." That system paid for itself in the first 5 minutes of operation!

I can only hope that the mindset will change in North America to one of preventative maintenance, rather than reactive. This mindset is by no means limited to mechanical maintenance, but when a simple solution exists - the arguments for not fixing the problem tend to lose their weight... Fortunately the attendees at these tradeshows know their stuff. They know the problems they deal with, and understand the concepts on how to fix them. Hopefully they'll rub off on everyone else!