Thursday, February 25, 2010

The WEF WaterBlog Has Moved!


As of February 2010, the WEF WaterBlog has moved to a new spot! Bookmark http://www.wef.org/blogs/ into your favorites - this is where you'll find the latest WaterBlog, along with all of the archived blogs.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Urban Rivers: Don’t Miss the Boat to a Sustainable Future for Our Cities!

By Paul Freedman, 2009-2010 President of WEF

There was a time when large urban cities, like Boston, saw their waterfront locations as assets in transporting wastes away from the city and supporting navigation, commerce, and manufacturing. These urban cities still see the waterfront asset today, but in a different light. Today’s cities want to integrate their waters into urban life as part of building greener, cleaner places for living, recreation, and supporting business and commerce. I mentioned Boston because it’s the site of WEF’s Cities of the Future and Urban River Restoration 2010 conferences. There practitioners and visionaries will take a comprehensive look at revitalizing urban rivers and waterfronts and explore the exciting possibilities for sustainable urban environments, our cities of the future.

For successful and sustainable cities and urban river restoration, integrated planning is essential. Multiple stakeholders with different agendas, problems, and budgets must get together and develop one vision to leverage rivers as a source of water supply, social and commercial enhancement, even spiritual renewal. This event will bring major players together, including city planners and administrators, transportation and landscape engineers and architects, public works directors and other officials, to focus on urban river restoration, and they’ll be sharing ideas in the context of sustainability and a population shift back into cities. Collaborative input from different types of professionals is needed to create sustainable urban infrastructure and the interdependent engineered and natural systems that will characterize our future cities. That is why WEF for the first time has simultaneously co-located two specialty conferences, Cities of the Future and Urban River Restoration.

Revitalizing cities and especially major urban industrial areas that are abandoned or scarred can be realized with the right kind of vision and integrated planning. The outcome can be vibrant sustainable cities with triple bottom line benefits including a cleaner environment, enhanced lifestyles, and stronger economies. With the right stakeholders and an eye toward sustainability, water quality leaders can start planning today or certainly in Boston next month. Be sure to plan to attend this exciting event!

Friday, January 15, 2010

So You Want to Run a First-Class Utility?

Once again, a new year has started and folks everywhere are reviewing goals for personal growth and setting new ones. On the professional side, water quality leaders have the Water Environment Federation’s vast and varied resources to help them grow and become even better at protecting the world’s water. Utility managers (and I was one for some 23 years) have a special resource to support their goal-setting and desire for top operational efficiency--the Effective Utility Management Primer for Water and Wastewater Utilities.

I wanted to blog about the EUM because those who care about great utility management need to know about this invaluable tool…it worked at my utility and it can work for yours. To develop it, managers from 16 diverse facilities, large and small, public and private, water and wastewater, came together through EPA to identify the breadth of what is involved in effective utility management and strategic planning. Appointed by collaborators EPA, AMWA, APWA, AWWA, NACWA, NAWC, and WEF(as a WEF appointees I represented Columbus Water Works), we hammered out what is needed for success and how to measure progress. The result is a terrific and practical tool for strategic planning and management—well worth using by managers on their own or with consultant assistance.

You know so many times we think of the technical aspects of running a utility, but there are many other elements to consider. For example, a first-class operation really pays attention to customer service, whether you’re talking water or wastewater. That’s just one of 10 attributes outlined in the EUM, which also describes the five keys to management success.

If you are passionate about clean water and great management, I highly recommend you check out this important tool, which is the basis for The Utility Management Conference in San Francisco next month. Meanwhile, we’d love to hear from folks who are using the EUM or have questions about its use. Please share comments here.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Putting the 'Special' in 2010 Specialty Conferences

By Jeanette Brown, 2009-2010 President-Elect of WEF

Welcome to 2010 at the Water Environment Federation, where this year’s Specialty Conference series looks to be better than ever before. As a participant in the 2009 Nutrient Conference, I gained so much both professionally and personally because of the technical content and the ability to network with experts in the field. I have participated in and attended other specialty conferences this past year where the experience was just as rewarding. These conferences are exclusive and wonderful ways to learn about select areas from leaders in the field. As you can see from the list below in 2010, we plan an even greater variety of conferences which offer something for all professionals employed in the water sector. If any of these topics applies to your job or appeals to your interest, please consider joining the thousands of water quality professionals who participate in these unique events every year. For technical excellence, superior meeting arrangements, and unmatched networking opportunities, you’ll find WEF truly puts the ‘special’ in specialty conferences. See you in Savannah for Residuals and Biosolids!