Onsite water management’s powerful alignment with ESG | Greenbiz

Onsite water management has long been an afterthought as most attention paid to water management is mostly focused on supply and treatment. However, ignoring onsite water, or the "last mile of the water network" as we like to call it, can be costly. In fact, nearly 9 trillion gallons of water are wasted each year across the water network, from supply to the last mile. With the UN forecasting a 40 percent gap in freshwater availability by 2030, it’s no longer economically, socially or environmentally feasible to ignore the last mile of the water network. So, what exactly is the last mile?

The water network is made up of three main components: supply, treatment and onsite water use. Supply and treatment happen in a relatively controlled and uniform ecosystem. Comparatively, the last mile of the water deals with the end-user. As such, that network is incredibly diverse, containing a multitude of stakeholders. The ecosystem is made up of a wide range of constituents, vendors and visitors with an unpredictable range of skills, weaknesses, motivations and honesty.

Due to a lack of water use visibility and long-held change-averse behavior, onsite water issues are the hardest to see before it is too late. Water has an uncanny ability to leak to where it can cause the most damage, often long hidden from view, only coming to attention after significant damage has already occurred. Water blindness can come at a significant cost as water leaks can have a domino effect and the resulting total cost may be astronomical.

Although there are many challenges to managing onsite water, harnessing the right combination of technology, people and domain expertise can eliminate water waste and save both businesses and the environment. This can be accomplished by fixing leaks, building infrastructure that is more sustainable and using technology that automatically detects leaks or breaks in the system.

One such technology system is HydroPoint’s WaterCompass. This system provides real-time intelligence on water usage and leak detection, giving property or facilities managers visibility from anywhere. By getting real-time alerts of an onsite leak, property managers can immediately start work on repairing the leak and ensuring that it does not become a massive water-wasting event. For example, most landscape irrigation occurs at night when very few people are present at a site. Should a leak occur, no one would be aware of it until the morning, leading to significant waste and potentially both brand and property damage. Using leak detection technology such as WaterCompass prevents these events from occurring as the system alerts as soon as a water leak begins. This also works for hard-to-reach out-of-sight places, as the technology allows for site managers to have visibility into the entire site’s water usage remotely.

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Taxonomy

• Leakage Detection
• Leakage
• Leakage Reduction
• leakage
• pipeline leak detection
• Leak Detection and Inspection