WC137 JulyAug 2024 - Magazine - Page 15
N MAY 2023, sampling data released by California’s Department of Social Services revealed that thousands of children
attending state child-care centers were being exposed to
brain-damaging levels of lead in the water supply.
The culprit was lead service lines (LSLs): old water pipes
that release dangerous amounts of the neurotoxin into the drinking water supply. While state and federal agencies have already
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committed to replacing them, about 9 million LSLs are still in
operation across the U.S.
As cities rush to replace them, they’ve run into a big problem: they don’t know where many of them are. Digging up
and replacing service lines is one challenge, but in many cases
the most difficult ‘digging’ utilities are doing is through their
records.
Across the country, utilities are rushing to find thousands
of legal, regulatory, and historical records to identify the exact
locations of LSLs, a process that can take years from start to
finish, all while limited funding for LSL replacement dwindles.
Welcome to water’s recordkeeping problem.
A problem centuries in the making, LSL replacement is
important, but it’s by no means the only area of water utility
management affected by the mountains of paper and digital
records utilities are fighting to manage.
In fact, many utilities today struggle with the most basic
drinking and wastewater-related recordkeeping requirements.
Even something as basic as setting up and keeping track of
sampling and water quality monitoring plans can be a challenge: sampling data is often unstandardized and lives in many
different places at once, sucking time and resources away from
where they’re needed most.
Having sampling information scattered and disorganized in
this way doesn’t just make it difficult to stay on top of regular
reporting, it increases the risk of regulatory non-compliance
and fines and puts our environment at risk. It can also mean
missing out on billions of dollars in funding, like last year’s
historic $10.3 billion 3M settlement concerning PFAS.
Over the course of my work at Klir, a U.S.-based software
startup that helps large North American utilities manage their
compliance data, I’ve met with countless utilities struggling
with poor data stewardship, leading to gaps in knowledge and
costly delays. Whether it’s water quality and equipment monitoring in water treatment, customer records management in
backflow prevention, industrial pretreatment programs, permit
management, or LSLs, poor recordkeeping is a problem we see
time and time again in every area of water utility management.
David Lynch
is the CEO of Klir, a cloud-based task
management platform that allows utilities
to automate and digitize the thousands of
manual tasks required to continually deliver
safe and secure water
Klir
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T
WATER C AN ADA • JULY/AUGUS T 2024
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