The Firms Behind the Decisions: Engineering and Construction's Expanding Role in Water

Well, One story I couldn't stop thinking about this week comes from actually a Bloomberg article that was published this past week.

America's reservoirs are quietly filling up with dirt.

It was actually a fairly long article for Bloomberg, but Denver's Strontius Springs Reservoir has lost almost a fifth of its capacity to sediment that's washed down from wildfire-scarred hillsides and Since it was built 40 years ago, Bloomberg puts a national loss at about 25 million Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of storage.

What is that? I know we use Olympic-sized swimming pools every now and then, but that's roughly 1.8 times the full capacity of Lake Mead.

which has gone to mud, right? And so one geomorphologist had told Bloomberg it can take as little as 15% sediment buildup to block reservoirs intake entirely.

So, you know, it's a pretty significant impact and something that shouldn't be overlooked.

We built some of these things, like I said, 40 years ago.

So when reservoirs lose capacity, Farmers, if the water isn't available to them because there's not enough water specifically in the reservoir, farmers make up the difference by pumping groundwater.

And I know it was estimated in 2015, California farmers spent an extra $600 million for pumping.

It's pretty significant.

So it costs a lot of whether it be electricity or diesel fuel to run these pumps.

But this is the American story right now.

This is really what I wanted to get at.

And we've spent decades building capacity, all of these reservoirs across the US and assumed basically someone down the line is going to maintain it.

Unfortunately, we're the ones in the line now and we're the ones who are going to have to deal with it.

My bet is that within five years, sediment removal becomes a notable line item in Western utility budgets.

I don't want to say an afterthought because I know some are dealing with this and this is something that comes up with increased wildfires and drought.

And as we can see in places like California, or should I say Colorado, where it really did not snow this past winter, there's going to be a lot of runoff.

And a lot of that sediment is going to go into reservoirs.

So why build more capacity When the capacity is already built, see the reservoirs, non-revenue water, we built the pipes.

Why do we just let it leak out? A number I saw over the past month or two is that the city of New Orleans has said that its non-revenue water or water loss rate is about 60 to 70%.

So that's what caught my eye this past week.