This is a sign the U.S. market for municipal infrastructure is starting to recover, said GLV's chief operating officer, Richard Verreault.

The industrial sector contracts, worth about $9 million, cover water intake screening equipment for several clients.

GLV supplies its screening technology to the energy, desalination, food and beverage and chemical industries.

The depressed pulp and paper industry, with heavy investment cutbacks, hit GLV's results for the second quarter ended Sept. 30, while the water treatment business grew and improved its return. Verreault sees signs the downturn in orders from pulp and paper companies has stabilized.

GLV's quarterly earnings were $1.8 million, or six cents a share, down from $2.9 million, or 11 cents a share a year earlier, on revenue of $104 million, down 30.7 per cent.

First-half earnings were $2.9 million, or 10 cents a share, down from $5 million, or 19 cents a share, a year earlier, on revenue of $217 million, down almost 29 per cent.

When addressing the issue of water supply and treatment, sustainable practices are driven by three key factors:

• environment,
• economics and
• society.

The environmental drivers of sustainability include improving access to safe water supplies and tightening regulations governing water quality and use. On the economic front, reducing costs, avoiding liability, and improving revenues are all part of the sustainability picture. Then there are the social drivers in which communities must be assured of a safe, clean water supply and support a company’s “social license” to operate.

Several industrial water users ─ including leaders in the resource and power generation industries ─ are applying new technologies to reduce water consumption, increase water reuse, and convert waste into a useful resource.

Environmental sustainability
Regulation has been a powerful force in determining access to water supplies, water quality, and wastewater discharge requirements. In some cases ─ especially when demand on local water supplies is excessive ─ regulators are calling for as much as 90 percent of wastewater to be reused in industrial processes. This, in turn, causes companies to continually seek new and better technologies that treat water, minimize water usage, and improve recycling performance.>/p>

Some technologies that have been in use for some time are falling short of meeting the three sustainability pillars. Lime treatment, for example, has been a mainstay of the mining industry for decades. However, this process can produce a metal-laden toxic sludge that must be maintained in vast storage ponds for ongoing monitoring and control. As a result, the stored sludge can become a long-term environmental liability for the mining company and the communities in which they operate. Membrane systems have proven to be highly effective in treating wastewater for industrial processes and meeting the standard for drinking water. Yet these systems can generate a crystalline byproduct that demands special handling and disposal. Membrane systems also consume high amounts of energy and can have limited recycle rates, as low as 50 percent, limiting water reuse.

BioteQ's water treatment plants recovered close to 3,000,000 pounds of metal contaminants from the environment in 2008. The metal byproducts are sold to refineries and recycled into useful products.

A water treatment process that is gaining ground in the mining industry is sulphide-precipitation. This technology removes toxic heavy metals from contaminated wastewater to produce clean water that can reused or safely discharged. Rather than creating a sludge by-product that requires special disposal, the process recovers metal concentrates, allowing sites to convert contaminated waste into useful products for resale. One U.S. operation, for example, has been able to reuse 2.8 billion liters of wastewater a year and recover close to 1.3 million pounds of metal contaminants.

New ion exchange technologies that remove sulphate from wastewater have been successfully tested for power generation applications to treat cooling water and blowdown from flue-gas desulphurization systems. These processes produce clean water that reduces scaling of equipment and a clean gypsum byproduct that can be recycled into building products and fertilizers. In addition, ion-exchange processes consume up to 90 percent less energy than comparable membrane systems, and deliver improved water recovery rates up to 95 percent.

Economic sustainability
The ability to remove toxins from a site and recycle them into useful and marketable products plays a large part in ensuring economic sustainability in water treatment. By reclaiming metal content for refining and resale, the sulphide-precipitation process can turn a cost center into a revenue generator and reduce the life cycle costs of water treatment. At the same time, removal of the toxins means that the water can be reused for industrial processes or safely discharged to the environment for recycling downstream into municipal water supplies. Recycling rates can easily exceed 90 percent. BioteQ’s sulphide technologies, for example, removed 3 million pounds of metal contaminants in 2008 for refining and reuse, which generated close to $7.8 million in revenues.

Jiangxi Copper Company Ltd., one of China’s largest copper producers, now uses sulphide-precipitation water treatment at its Dexing site. In its first year of operations, the site treated more than 5.6 billion liters of water and recovered 1.3 million pounds of copper from wastewater for refining and sale. At full capacity, the plant is expected to recover up to 3.6 million pounds of copper annually.

In addition to short-term revenue generating streams, life cycle costs are an equally important consideration for economic sustainability. This entails analyzing the most cost-effective approach for using resources over the lifespan of a project, taking into account capital, operating, and maintenance costs – including disposal.

Sulphide-precipitation and ion-exchange technologies can lower life cycle costs because they can generate revenue to offset treatment costs, and have comparatively low capital and operating costs. Importantly, these technologies reduce long-term site liabilities by producing no waste for disposal.

Social sustainability
If an industrial operation fails to deliver social and environmental benefits, it will struggle to win community buy-in and permits. Responsible water treatment practices must take into account start-up, ongoing operations and potential environmental legacies that can impact a site long after closure.

For example, companies in the mining industry have applied newer technologies to clean up abandoned sites and reclaim land for their communities. In Breckenridge, Colo., the town applied new water treatment processes to deal with the acid mine drainage at a long-abandoned silver and zinc mine and at the same time created 1,800 acres of parkland. In addition to the newly reclaimed green space, the municipality was able to improve water quality to support fish populations in a nearby river.

More operations are putting greater effort into adopting a holistic approach to wastewater treatment. The successes to date indicate that this trend will continue to grow in our efforts to achieve sustainability.

The report called on Firestone to improve its waste treatment facility.

Firestone said it believed it fully complied with environmental law and its waste water was not harmful to health.

Sample testing

The Firestone plant is about 48km (30 miles) south-east of Monrovia and the creeks are a water source for tens of thousands of villagers.

Many residents had said they could no longer use the water.

The BBC's Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia says residents in the town of Kpanyah town had been complaining of developing skin rashes on venturing into affected creeks.

The investigation team included government ministries, Firestone representatives and local residents.

Water samples were collected and tested at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. Testing was also carried out in Liberia.

The tests confirmed high levels of orthophosphate.

The report called on the management of Firestone to adhere to the Environmental Protection and Management Law.

Firestone said it believed it was in full compliance with the law and with its environmental commitments to the government and that it "strongly disagreed with any characterisation to the contrary".

It said an external consultant had found the plant's waste water was not harmful.

Firestone said that phosphate was also not harmful to human health but that it would work to address any elevated levels.

It said it believed its water treatment system was working as designed and intended.

A date for a second public hearing, a requirement of the CDBG program, hasn't been determined but will likely be next month as the CDBG application must be submitted in early January.

This year, the City only received $6,000 in CDBG funding as match for an FAA grant during the regular funding period. However, the federal stimulus package included additional CDBG funding for Nevada, and the City applied for and received $80,000 to go towards design of the arsenic treatment plant.

Newell said the City has a $1.1 million match that is a requirement of the large U.S. Army Corps of Engineers grant it has received for construction of the treatment plant, whose estimated price tag is $4.5 million.

"We definitely need to go after it," said Council member George Dini of seeking CDBG funding for the treatment plant grant match, adding he wasn't sure of any other funding programs.

"I agree with George," said Council member Ross Whitacre. "I can't think of anything more important (to apply for)."

Newell said a concern is that after the 2010 Census is completed the City of Yerington may no longer meet the income requirement (minimum median income) to participate in the CDBG program. He noted the City had to do a salary survey to qualify after the 2000 Census. The only other Lyon County community currently eligible for CDBG grants is Silver Springs.

The initial deadline to comply with the new federal arsenic standing in drinking water has passed but city and many jurisdictions/public water systems has received an extension through the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection to meeting the requirement. However, the new deadline is January 2011 so the city is facing a tight timeline.

There was no other comment from the public.

Currently the City can only submit one CDBG application during the regular funding cycle. The City hasn't only submitted applications from the city as in the past it has sponsored applications for apparatus from the Mason Valley Fire Protection District and for the Boys & Girls Club of Mason Valley.

"We are recycling 100 percent of the flowback water, which is between 15 percent and 30 percent of the water used during Marcellus Shale well drilling," said Ventura. A typical well drilled in the Marcellus Shale formation uses new horizontal drilling technology that uses millions of gallons of water to fracture gas-containing shale thousands of feet underground and may return 600,000 gallons of water to be recycled.

Ventura, a native of Penn Hills, spoke yesterday at Hart Energy Publishing's "Developing Unconventional Gas East Convention" in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown.

Recycling efforts are expected by proponents to play a huge role in achieving the state Department of Environmental Protection's proposed 2011 water quality discharge standards.

Earlier this year, DEP Secretary John Hanger announced a proposal that all industrial water discharges contain less than 500 parts per million of total dissolved solids. The proposal would impact several industries, including natural gas development.

Water recycling is important because demand for treating wastewater from oil and gas production in the state is expected to reach about 9 million gallons a day this year, according to a DEP report. It is projected to increase to 16 million gallons next year and 19 million gallons a day in 2011, when new standards limiting such pollution would take effect.

Another major drilling company, Rex Energy Corp. of State College, is recycling all Marcellus Shale drilling water the company recovers.

"We believe that water-related issues in the Marcellus have been somewhat overblown, but we are recycling 100 percent of our recoverable water," said Rex CEO Benjamin W. Huburt.

Not everyone is convinced that recycling recoverable water is the answer to potential water pollution problems within the Marcellus Shale formation, which covers an area including most of Pennsylvania and portions of New York, Ohio and West Virginia, more than 54,000 square miles.

"Two words, Dunkard Creek," said Tom Hoffman, Western Pennsylvania director for Clean Water Pittsburgh, referring to a huge kill of fish, mussels and other aquatic life along a 30-mile stretch of Dunkard Creek in Greene County on the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border. Wastewater from drilling operations have been blamed for the incident.

A yellow algae usually found in very hot climates such as in the Southwest is believed to be the reason for the kill, although the direct source for the algae formation has yet to be determined, officials have said.

CNX Gas Corp. has agreed to suspend injections of wastewater from its coalbed methane gas operations at Consol Energy Corp.'s Blacksville No. 1 mine in Greene County.

But behind this apparently eco-friendly exterior is an ugly truth: The water we take from and return to Lake Mead every day requires a massive output of electricity, much of it generated from fossil fuels.

Energy experts across the country are starting to look at just how the nation’s water supply systems affect electricity consumption, the strain they put on grids and the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that come from the treatment and transporting of water. It was one of the topics at the 2009 Water Smart Innovations conference held in Las Vegas this month.

About 25 percent of America’s electricity goes to moving and treating water, according to a 2005 California Energy Commission report.

California passed a law three years ago that is aimed, in part, at the electricity burned to move and treat water. The legislation requires greenhouse gas reduction for water utilities, which have been instructed to make their operations more energy efficient and to incorporate renewable energy. With population growth, demand for water and water treatment are expected to grow. At the same time water treatment standards are expected to become stricter. That all adds up to a prediction that the energy demand for water will continue to grow significantly.

As municipal water systems attempt to rein in costs and improve conservation, many of them are starting to look more closely at the nexus between water and energy. Engineers and number-crunchers across the country are conducting energy audits on their water utilities and water audits on their energy utilities to give cities and states better ideas about how water management can be incorporated into their energy conservation initiatives.

But so far, that hasn’t been done in Southern Nevada despite the fact that the cost of energy for treating and delivering water accounts for 12.6 percent of the Las Vegas Valley Water District’s operating budget and despite predictions by water engineers and managers from across the nation that water management will be the next area the feds will target in a bid to reduce greenhouse gases and stress on electrical grids.

About 90 percent of the Las Vegas Valley’s water comes through a network of pipes, pumped many miles from Lake Mead to treatment facilities then to homes and businesses. The other 10 percent is pumped up from the ground and sent through the same network of pipes and treatment facilities. What goes down the drain is then pumped to wastewater treatment facilities, to golf courses or back to Lake Mead.

With its reliance on pumping, Southern Nevada provides a prime example of just what a strain on electricity resources — and what a huge carbon footprint — water management can have.

The energy used to pump and treat water in the Las Vegas Valley dwarfs any other type of local electric consumption.

Southern Nevada used about 853.8 million kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2008 to move 439,187 acre-feet of water into valley homes and businesses, according the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Another 119.2 million kilowatt-hours of electricity was used that year to treat 22,501 acre-feet of water and send it back to the lake, according to figures from the Clean Water Coalition, a consortium of local wastewater agencies.

A kilowatt-hour is enough energy to power a 100-watt lightbulb for 10 hours. One acre-foot is about the same amount of water the average Las Vegas Valley home uses in two years.

Southern Nevada used 2,107 kilowatt-hours for every acre-foot, or 325,851 gallons, of water delivered, treated and sent back to the lake last year. Nationally, most agencies use between 652 and 6,517 kilowatt-hours per acre-foot, according to Lisa Maddaus, a senior engineer with environmental engineering firm Brown and Caldwell.

Another way of looking at it: The amount of electricity used to move and treat water in Southern Nevada annually is enough to power the entire valley several times over.

It’s a huge amount of energy that comes from a variety of sources. Eighty percent of it is generated by the water utilities at renewable and fossil-fuel-powered power plants.

So every gallon of water wasted also means energy wasted, unnecessarily dirtier air and more climate-changing gas sent into the atmosphere.

And because you need water to make electricity from fossil fuels, it also means more water wasted to replace the wasted water.

Water managers in Las Vegas know this. About 14 percent of the energy used to pump water from Lake Mead to area homes is generated by renewable energy plants, most of them hydro-powered.

And more self-generation is in the works.

Henderson plans to have the first local wastewater treatment facility using renewable power. The city recently got federal funding to build a 4-megawatt solar installation to help power its wastewater treatment facilities and to install turbines in some of its downhill-sloping water pipes to generate electricity emission-free from the flowing water.

Local water managers across the valley are also hoping water users will do their part by switching out their water-hogging landscapes, installing low-flow faucets and buying energy- and water-efficient appliances.

Those changes could do a lot more good — in many more ways — than most people realize.

In the US, municipal wastewater treatment plants traditionally have had one focus: treat wastewater and return clean water back to the environment, meeting all regulatory requirements. But, as cities and populations grow, there is an increasing need to focus on the residual byproduct of the wastewater process, biosolids. Escalating waste disposal and energy costs for biosolids treatment, along with the environmental impact for landfills have increased the focus on biosolids management and waste minimization. In fact, the largest costs associated with wastewater treatment are related to the energy and disposal fees for biosolids management. It is estimated that disposal fees will increase more than 10 times in the next 10 years.

“With increasing pressures to municipal governments’ budgets, it’s imperative to address the energy and waste disposal costs as part of the engineering equation. We’re seeing a more holistic approach to the wastewater treatment process. Municipalities and engineers are evaluating the entire wastewater operations, including solids disposal and beneficial reuse of biogas and total energy consumption,” said Chuck Gordon, CEO of Siemens Water Technologies.

According to EPA estimates, the quantity of sludge produced in a waste water treatment plant is approximately 1% of the quantity of treated wastewater yet sludge management costs can be as high as 40-50% of total operating costs, much of this for disposal. Technology solution providers, such as Siemens, are looking at this issue from many different angles. For instance, technologies that reduce biosolids, more efficiently dewater and dry sludge, better capture and convert biogas or compost are providing opportunities for communities to beneficially use biosolids and reduce operating costs, while benefitting the environment.

One recent technology advancement is the Cannibal Solids Reduction System, which can reduce the production of biosolids by 50-80%. This system re-configures the traditional activated sludge process, lowering the biosolids production, while significantly reducing the power requirements for biosolids stabilization. On West Coast community, saved about $50,000 in sludge disposal costs per year, and yet another saved about $80,000 per year.

Siemens has also seen significant interest in its BioFlowsheet+ Solutions Program, a biological process optimization program, which evaluates specific cost factor such as energy use, labor and disposal. The program integrates several key wastewater operations including biological, solids separation and controls. A recent California wastewater treatment plant was able to achieve a 70% reduction in biosolids production while reducing the aeration requirements from their aerobic digester by more than 90% by incorporating the Cannibal interchange bioreactor.

Dewatering and drying systems can help municipalities reduce disposal costs while simultaneously reducing their energy needs. Siemens systems such as the Centramax dewatering centrifuge, the J-Vap vacuum/drying filter press and the CTD biosolids dryer are three such systems.

A Corona, Calif. wastewater treatment plant installed a Siemens CTD biosolids dryer. Using a dual fuel source, natural gas and digester gas, the energy efficient biosolids dryer works in conjunction with the cogeneration facility, producing a fuel for the facility while reducing the volume of biosolids by 80%. In addition, the process produces a Class A beneficial reuse product that can be applied to land for agricultural purposes as well as using it for an organic fuel, and supplies the low-grade heat necessary to promote biological growth in the plant’s digesters.

Finally, ESCO (energy services company) performance contracts are an alternative funding method for a capital improvement in the wastewater plant that reduces energy use, operation costs, and labor. Samples of energy services and improvement measures include biosolids reduction, methane gas creation and usage, water conservation and reuse, high-efficiency dryer installation, SCADA system improvements, and aeration system upgrades.

“With greater awareness comes a faster push for innovation, which will provide even more options for communities to reduce life cycle costs and improve their biosolids management. This is win-win for the community and the environment,” said Gordon.

Further information about solutions for water treatment are available at http://www.siemens.com/water

In the Albany area, $2.9 million of the funds will go to the Albany County Sewer District for the installation of a combined heat and power system to capture waste heat and produce electricity from Albany County Sewer District’s existing facility.

The $43 million will support cost-cutting water conservation projects, energy efficiency technology for drinking water systems and clean water infrastructure. Such projects include: green roofs, permeable pavement and rain harvesting.

The lot involves the design and construction of sewage treatment works, water treatment works, pumping stations and reservoirs.

Firms which successfully make their way onto the Register will be required to compete or negotiate for work, which will be carried out between 2010 and 2015.

The lot could involve up to 350 individual works packages and the total value of individual contracts could climb as high as £350m.

The work has been split into three operational areas: North London, South London and Thames Valley. Most of the firms are bidding for all three, while Interserve is bidding for two.

A source close to one of the bidders said: "Thames is absolutely massive and contractors are understandably excited about the prospects of getting onto the framework. Hopefully we should have a decision on who's made it by around Christmas."

Thames Water's £5.5bn AMP5 programme features a wide variety of ambitious projects, including an upgrade to London's major sewage treatment works, the continuation of replacing Victorian water mains across London, and flood protection works at treatment plants.

Work is also planned to start on the construction of the Upper Thames Reservoir to create a more reliable water supply.

Thames submitted its final business plan to Ofwat last April, with the regulator due to make its final decision in February 2010. Thames Water declined to comment on which firms are bidding for the framework.