Interview with Cindy Wallis-Lage, Black & Veatch

Ahead of her participation at the World Water-Tech North America Summit, we were pleased to speak to Black & Veatch’s President – Global Water Business, Cindy Wallis-Lage to learn more about emerging technologies, One Water and the importance of data analytics in asset management.

It’s no secret that the scale of the challenges faced across the water sector are huge; what are the emerging technologies and tools making these challenges easier to tackle?

Foundational to solving the challenges in the water sector is harnessing data that will allow us to take action that reduces operating cost, addresses workforce challenges, increases performance predictability and optimizes assets. When we embrace digital tools, we can drive a deeper level of understanding of our systems through the increased connectivity of historically disparate data sets and see trends that offer new insights. This insight can drive the efficiency and predictability we need to address OPEX and CAPEX requirements.

How do you define One Water and how is this definition brought into project design?

One Water is simple in concept – it is all about the drop. Not the history, not the label but rather the potential. It is about seeking the best use of the drop for a community, for a watershed. When we work together across perceived, and sometimes real, boundaries and think in an integrated fashion, it allows us to optimize water resource management and achieve outcomes that align to community objectives. To truly achieve One Water success requires education of the public, the politicians and the business community such that common goals for a community are clear and action can be taken to meet those goals.

How can data analytics be better integrated into asset management? How can we as an industry make better investments into our networks?

Strong data analytics are the foundation to making informed decisions in when, where and how much we invest in our water infrastructure. When we collect the right information we can determine which assets are performing well, which are not, and whether the asset needs replaced, repaired, repurposed or fine-tuned. This applies to all of our water assets – equipment, basins, pipelines. When we have solid information to drive our decisions, our ability to communicate the need to invest and the value from that investment to the public and the politicians increases significantly as they see the benefit vs just the cost. That allows us to make better investments into all of our water infrastructure.

Who are you looking to virtually meet and connect with at the World Water-Tech North America Summit next month?

The water community! I love the opportunity to connect with friends across our industry and make new acquaintances in a way that allows us to share ideas, share experiences and collaborate together to make resilient and sustainable communities everywhere.

Cindy will speak on the panel discussion:  One Water Resilience – Prepare, Respond and Recover.

She will be joined by: 

Hardeep Anand,   Deputy Director – Capital Improvement & Regulatory Compliance ,  MIAMI-DADE WATER AND SEWER DEPARTMENT
Tony Parrott,   Executive Director,  LOUISVILLE METROPOLITAN SEWER DISTRICT
Joone Lopez,  General Manager , MOULTON NIGUEL WATER DISTRICT
Eva Arnaiz,   Country Manager USA ,  AQUALIA
Robert Puente,   President & CEO ,  SAN ANTONIO WATER SYSTEM

EXPERT INTERVIEW COLLECTION

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2 Comments

1. Historical Perspective:

   Pre-British, Indian villages functioned like little Republics which managed their own resources. The erstwhile kings had no army of engineers or public works departments, they mostly encouraged local nobels, ordinary people and even temples to build water harvesting structure (the Gaekwads of Gujarat, Cholas’s of Mysore). History is witness to the fact that the British lacked understand the village based water management systems, based on local watershed.

    

   With the British arrival in 1600 AD (EIC) and building state-controlled bureaucracies and raising land revenue to irrational limits, even in drought year, such as for a villager to have no option but to forego the crop as taxes, because payment was to be made only in cash, a surety to decay the community managed water management systems in Indian villages.

    

   The old age old technology started to gain popularity in a new way, the British way and perpetuated further towards decay by the colonial policy makers.

    

   Large scale constructions in Phalodi, Barmer and Balotra regions of Rajasthan desert, and Aizwal of Mizoram, apart from sporadic spread to other regions in the recent past, which is relatively a new technique after British colonization.

   RWH traces its history to biblical times, to as far as 4000 yrs. back in the Palestine and Greece. In ancient Rome, residences were built with individual cisterns and paved courtyards. As early as 3rd B.C, farming communities in Baluchistan & Kutch impounded rainwater-GobriKariz & Kund/s, Tankas

   (There is no harm in repeating a good thing……Plato)

   Today, unfortunately, the entire heritage, culturally and technologically, lies in tatters. And, no agency can be solely blamed for this plundering. A British Irrigation expert Sir. William Willcocks, on invitation of the British authorities in 1920, to advise them on why India was suffering from the repeated famines- advised them that the British would do best to learn from the Natives themselves on the ingenuity of Bengal’s flood irrigation system, as such the role of British, and post- independence Indian political leadership and the irrigation bureaucracy, added to the vows by inheriting British arrogance and ignorance and resistance to understand these systems.

    

   Although several ministries and departments formulate policies& programs that affect water supply and sanitation, there is little coordination, unfortunately, at either policy or program level. In most cases, it is left to ESA-funded interventions to improve functioning and demonstrate possible convergence in government functioning, as for instance in the World Bank-funded Water Resource Restructuring Projects implemented in several states to improve water resource management and the EC-funded State Partnership Program in Rajasthan, seeking to implement a new state water policy based on the concept of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM)- WASMO focus to pursue decentralized governance, women centred process.

    

   However, political considerations reflected in inter-state river water sharing agreements also affect water resource management in the country as a whole and govern state investment patterns as demonstrated, for instance, in Maharashtra (Planning Commission, 2006). The highly successful village natural resources management projects of 70s and 80s relied heavily on small, village level, community managed harvesting projects to bring water to parched fields, recharge groundwater wells and enough for drinking purposes.

    

   There is enough evidence in the books to indicate that the people knew about the rainfall regimes, soil types and appropriate irrigation techniques in specific micro-ecological contexts.

    

   The Arthasastra divides the country between Himalayas and Ocean into various kinds of regions-forest regions; village areas; mountainous areas; wet or humid areas; dry-lands; plains. The Kautilya was well aware that in areas where there are no flowing rivers and received sparse rainfall, the most practical means of getting water water supply was by dig wells with underground springs as their feeders. And, a water cess over- above the land revenue was levied by the ancient state on all users of irrigation facilities, even those who had their own waterworks had to pay.

    

   Another important source is Kalhana’s Rajataringini, the chronicle of the kings of the Kashmir (1148-1150 AD). It is replete with information on canals, irrigations channels, embankments, aqueducts, circular dykes, barrages, wells, water wheels, flood spill channels, flood plains (Mars) and Kandi Jal (to divert flood waters of Jhelum, Sind rivers. The concept of a Hydraulic engineer (inscribed as Jalals Sutrada) in Tamil Nadu as far back as in 1388 A.D. Great merit was attached to Kings for pious deeds and religious merit for getting the wells and ponds dig. The first great civilizations, in the valleys of Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, Indus and Huang rivers, flourished only on the basis of water management systems.

    

   Water has been harvested in India since antiquity. Evidence of this tradition can be found in ancient texts, inscriptions, local traditions, and archaeological remains. There is good evidence of the advanced water harvesting systems even from pre-historic times.

    

   The Puranas, Mahabharata, Ramayana and various Vedic, Buddhist and Jain texts and terms used, contain several references to canals and channel (parivaha), tanks (tataka), embankments (setu), dam (storing water), and well (khata). Storage of water in cisterns was known by the time the first cities were built. The oldest known cisterns were discovered in Greece and Palestine, which cisterns were used to collect rainwater from roofs, paved squares& at times from water bearing sub-soil strata. 

    

   The famous (such as Tehri Dam…), anti- dam movement demanded less socially and ecologically destructive systems of water development, while we all have seen indigeniously constructed a variety of structures and varying places- in courtyard, in front of houses, in open agricultural fields (in Rajasthan, Jammu, Paris in France, Aizwal in Mizoram, GobriKarez (underground water channels) in Afghanistan and also ascribed to Zoroastrians etc. etc.), exhibits people’s intelligence and resourcefulness in making best use of their environment. We have also witnessed how well the technology has been integrated with the local culture of the area e.g. a sarai built near a Kundi (in Rajasthan) to provide drinking water for travelers passing by the road.

    

   What, has been invariably discovered in many villages (across the length and breadth of this country), that in many villages where people had cared to maintain their traditional water systems, even after the arrival of piped water supply system, there was no drinking water scarcity, compared to the adjoining villages in the area, where they had neglected their traditional systems (the drying up/ annual maintenance schedule, the drying up of the IG Rajasthan canal has meant waterless pipes and hence an acute water crisis.

2. Hi, Ms. C.W. Lage, 

   CEO, B&V

   Greetings from IIndia!

   I am Avinash Zutshi.My work in the water sector resonates with your understanding, work.

   I wish to stay in touch,discuss and share my work esp.latest as Member Task Force, National Jal Jeevan Mission, Govt.of India. You may wish to reach me at my contact ID @ : avinash.zutshi@gmail.com

   Mob..+919811758762