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Good afternoon. I want to welcome everyone to KPPC’s Water Efficiency Webinar. My name
is Edye Raymond and I am an engineer at KPPC. With me, and helping deliver today’s training,
is another engineer from KPPC, Andrew Carter.
We hope you find this water webinar very helpful. It’s designed for both industrial and commercial
entities to help better understand water management, efficiencies and opportunities for reducing
and reusing water. We have quite a bit of material to cover today, so in the interest
of time, please submit any questions via the question panel and we will answer them at
the end of the presentation.
In addition we will have three polling questions during the webinar. We hope you take a few
seconds to answer those when they appear and in return we will share the results with the
group. There will be approximately 50 minutes worth of material leaving us with about 10
minutes to answer any questions at the end.
Approximately 70% of the earth’s surface is water but only 1% is fresh, usable water.
Virtually every business has some sort of water need. Industry uses it to process materials,
manufacture goods and clean equipment. Businesses use it for sanitary, cooling, cleaning and
consumption. Although the relationship with water varies, I think we can all agree that
it’s very important to the success of our industries and our businesses.
Today we are going to touch on the importance of water efficiency before discussing water
management and the opportunities we hope you will be able to implement at your facilities
and organization. Water management will also include the steps of policy, planning, assessing,
tracking and mapping. We will spend about 50% of our time today discussing opportunities
that we hope are very useful to you and your facility. By managing your water, you should
be able to reduce not only your usage but water costs as well.
Before you see a U.S. Drought map taken as of August 21st, 2012. If you go to the NPR
webpage, there’s actually a wonderful animation that starts January 2011 that shows the United
States pretty much, almost drought-free (all the white areas). And it scrolls through month
by month until you get to August 21, 2012. As you can see from this map, large portions
of our United States are covered with drought currently. The ranges go from D0 to D4. The
darker colors, the dark red areas, are where much more intense areas of drought have hit
this country. When you look at this map, you can see it is hardest hit. Some of the hardest
hit areas in the central parts of the United States where a lot of our farmlands are. The
USDA is predicting we are going to have 3-4% increase in food costs next year because of
the drought this year. Currently over 50% of all of the US counties have been designated
as disaster areas by the USDA in 2012, mainly from drought. So you can see across the whole
entire United States, we have a lot of drought issues for many areas.
Focusing more specifically on our home state here in Kentucky, you can see that as of mid-summer,
the majority of our state was classified once again, in various degrees of drought. This
map is slightly different; the green areas are the normal areas, which is a very small
area, as you can see Kentucky. Then the light yellow, things are dry, and then dramatically
increases to the darker red where you can see drought areas. This is in one of the height
of one of our heat waves here in Kentucky. As of September 4, after we received larger
amounts of rain from the hurricane Isaac, 68% of Kentucky was still designated as dry
to drought level 4.
In addition to just impacting the farmers, which we’re all very aware of in the United
States, these drought areas are very far-reaching and can impact your organization with your
industry or a business. I kind of talked briefly about how it can damage your food supplies
and our costs are going to increase, but in addition to food costs, there are many industries
that rely on crops to actually make their product. Wheat, corn and soybeans have all
been very hard hit in 2012. Kentucky, we are known for our Kentucky Bourbon. And by definition,
bourbon has to be made with at least 51% corn. Since bourbon takes years to age to perfection,
2012 corn shortages could impact the price of bourbon years from now. That’s some of
the things some of our clients are looking at. Not just how it’s going to impact farmers,
but how does it impact our businesses and industries now and in making future decisions.
The drought is also causing structural damage as the ground is wicking away water from the
soil underneath structures. This can cause damage to the foundation and the walls in
not only your home but your businesses. Some experts have estimated that the damage to
homes this summer alone is the worst since the mid-1950 drought. Typically, drought structural
damage is not covered under your normal insurance. Another thing that the drought could impact
your facility is with transportation. With the Mississippi being low, many companies
have had to switch from moving their goods via barges to highway transportation, increasing
cost and time frames for shipping. So if drought conditions continue, it may impact your shipping.
And finally, many communities have implemented water restrictions. These restrictions vary
greatly across the country from limited or no outside water usage to the actual suggestion
of water conservation of their customers. If you are a company that utilizes a lot of
water in your process, what are you going to do if you are forced to reduce your water
usage? Or if water is just not available? Have you planned for that possibility? Do
you stop making your product?
Now that we’ve discussed the importance of water efficiency and the dangers of drought,
why should you manage your water? We are going to take a look at some of the benefits you
can get from managing your water. First of all, having a water management program encourages
continual improvement in your system. Very similar to other management programs which
you may or may not have at your facilities, for environmental or for energy reasons. But
it’s the same concept only focusing on water. If you look at your water, you are going to
see what you are using and set future water usage goals. The hope is that by organizing
your projects, you can tackle the ones with the greatest payback first. We also want you
to implement your program to increase efficiency and get your employees involved, regularly
assess your water usage performance. Something that everyone likes to hear is that final
bullet is Financial Returns. Water is not one of our most expensive natural resources
currently for industry; in Kentucky it is relatively cheap. People think there is a
lot of quantity out there. But as time continues, as droughts continue, water is also going
to be a precious resource and prices are going to increase. But by using water efficiency
in managing your water, you can save water and in many cases financial savings with electricity
as well.
So what does a water management program look like? The concept is very similar to other
management programs such as environmental or energy. Many of you may be familiar with
ISO 14001 or the brand-new standard out there, ISO 50001, a very similar concept. The key
to having a successful water management program at your site is not to reinvent the wheel.
You can have a stand-alone policy, or you can incorporate it into one of your current
programs. If you have a facility program already, if you have a corporate program or a good
option is to put in your ISO 14001 management system.
Regardless of how you set up your program, a good program should consist of all of the
following: Having a policy, a statement saying what you are going to do and how you want
to address water within your organization; Planning – looking at not only at what water
you are using but what your future water’s main need and what you would do in case of
a drought. Andrew is going to talk quite a bit of usage analysis and tracking. If you
don’t know how much you use, you cannot calculate your cost savings by reducing your
water. Finally, we are going to talk quite a bit about assessing opportunities. Probably
about 50% of our webinar today is going to be focusing on opportunities that we hope
you can implement at your facility. And finally, evaluating your system is always an excellent
way to continually improve any type of management program.
Now that I talked just very quickly about the overview, we are going to spend some time
talking about what each of these water management programs components consist of. We have a
poll question for you. If you could just take a second and click on the answers, “What
components of a Water Management Program do you currently have in place” at your facility?
Feel free to select all that apply: Policy – Now policy is having a statement
saying that you are going to reduce natural resources, reduce water
Planning – Have you looked at your facility to see what usage you are currently doing
and planning for the future? Tracking – Are you tracking your utility
bills and your usage? Assessing – Have you done any assessments
to look for opportunities in your facility?
We will take just a second or two if people are answering and then look at some of the
results. Ok. Looking at the results here we see of
the people who answered, almost half of you already have a policy and I am assuming several
of you may have an individual policy but many of you may have a water policy as part of
an environmental or larger policy. About a third of you said that you have been planning
on what you would do in a drought situation or if there is water reduction in your area.
About 50% said that you are already tracking your water usage which I think is wonderful
and Andrew is going to spend some time talking about some tools that can help you with tracking.
Only about a third of you said that you are assessing your facility for future opportunities
and ways you can reduce the amount of water that you are using. Then we had about 37%
said you are currently doing none of these things.
So hopefully, that’s why are you are here watching this webinar today. If we can give
you some good information to get you started in your program. Thank you for taking a few
seconds to answer those questions.
As I just said, the policy is one of the key parts of having a water management program.
Your policy is the foundation of your program. It can be a stand-alone document or statement,
or like I said, incorporated into your environmental policy. To be quite honest, pretty much all
the clients I have worked with in the past – and all those companies – they usually
include it into their environmental policy. It kind of makes sense. It fits. Your policy
covers water, electricity, and other natural resources. So it’s a good place to include
it into. They key is to do what works best for your company. As I mentioned, it is the
foundation and the basis of your objectives and targets. Having objectives and targets
are very useful tools. It’s very difficult for a company to reach a goal if you don’t
even set the goal to start with and communicate those goals throughout your organization.
Like any type of environmental or management program rolling out communications to your
employees and having them understand the importance of what you are doing. In this case, water
efficiency, makes the program much more successful than just having one or two people trying
to manage the project by themselves. Getting people in at different levels of the organization
is really key to having a successful program. In this example the policy is to conserve
natural resources, whether that’s water, or other natural resources. The objective
specific to water is to reduce water usage. The target for this particular company is
to reduce their water consumption by 25% from their 2011 baseline.
Baseline is important when setting your targets. Andrew is going to talk in just a minute how
it’s best to set your baseline. If you don’t match it back to square footage or to your
projection numbers, if you double your projections your water usage is probably going to increase
as well. So, you don’t want to set a target that is unreachable if your business improves
with time.
The second part of having a really good management system for your water is drought mitigation
planning. There are several considerations you need to think about when you are thinking
about drought planning. First of all is your current water needs. What do you need to get
production out the door to provide your services - to be able to keep the door open? Have you
ever looked this up? It’s a really good tool to see what’s going on and look for
some opportunities as well of getting rid of water needs that are not necessary to your
facility.
Future: What is your business plan? Are you adding new processes, square footage, services?
Do any of your future business plans rely upon water? If so, how might that change your
water needs in the future? Have you prepared for that when making your business decisions?
Next in the list is looking for drought response. As you saw from those drought maps, the U.S.
has changed dramatically in the last two years. Drought is very prominent in many areas of
our country. How are you going to respond with regards to quantity and quality of water
you need if it’s just simply not there? What other water resources are you going to
be able to tap into? Are there some companies that have trucks that can truck in water for
you? Is there a well on your property? What quantities are you going to need and what
quality of water are you going to be able to get to keep your doors open?
Then, last on the list is how to reduce that drought risk. By doing an assessment of your
current usage, and looking for opportunities, is there a way to reduce the amount of water
that you need currently, so if there isn’t a drought…if the drought comes…it’s
not as big of an impact on your organization. I think that is really key. One of our ancestral
clients did some drought mitigation planning and the surprising thing they learned is that
not only in drought time, but in current times, they could do without about 40% of their current
water usage. Their employees just did not understand that it was a precious resource
that is limited. There were many things they could cut out and reduce cost, water and also
reduce that drought risk to optimizing how much water they are currently using in their
facility.
So how can you reduce your drought risk? We are going to continue to talk about opportunities
throughout this training but keep in mind the four R’s. I think most of you are probably
familiar with the three R’s: reduce, reuse and recycle. What we’ve added is water refuse.
What does that mean? Can you simply perform this task without water? If someone is cleaning
up an area, can you sweep or shovel the floors instead of spraying it down with water? Can
you stop landscape irrigation by using fresh water? Those are all things you can look at
when you are going through your facility or your business and looking for ways to stop
using water.
One of the other four R’s is reduce. Can you perform this task with less water? Check
for leaks and drips and resolve them immediately. Hopefully that is something you are already
doing at home and in your facilities and businesses. Shut off any process water when it’s not
in use or install automatic shut-off valves. Andrew is going to spend some time talking
about controls and controls can really greatly help you reduce the amount of water that you
are using in your process. Flow restrictors on hoses and nozzles is another great way
you can reduce the amount of water in one of your operations. Reuse: Can you use water
from this process to be reused in this, or another process? Can you install circulating water
from non-contaminated water to other applications or back into your process? And at the end
after Andrew talks a little bit about getting your program going, I am going to give you
some examples. One of our clients has a really good case study where they were able to install
some piping and a tank and be able to reuse their water for some substantial savings.
The last on the list is recycle. Can the water be filtered and maybe put back into your system?
There’s some talk of grey water can be used from irrigation. Gray water can be if you
are washing your hands in the sink, how dirty really is that water? If that can be filtered
and reused in another area of your organization. So that’s just something to keep in mind
when going through your facility and looking at water look at ways you can refuse, reduce, reuse
or recycle. Kind of catchy? It’s easy to train your employees and they may come up
with some of the best ideas for how to implement that at your facility.
One more quick slide before I pass it over to Andrew, is I have a little sample Drought
Planning Checklist for you. You may want to use something like this or something similar
when talking about your drought planning. Now we just spent a little time thinking about
water and how we use it in process and in our internal operation and that’s very important.
But I don’t want you to forget that there are other entities and drought considerations
that could impact your services or you getting product out the door: Suppliers, customers,
transportation, employees and community. But there are drought situations that impact the
supplies you need to get. For example, I talked about the bourbon and the corn. That could
halt your production. And in house and in these organizations, you need to think about
not just in process but your support equipment: cooling, cleaning equipment, crop availability,
food costs and finally, fuel costs. Because if similar situations happen such as the reduction
of traffic on the Mississippi, and more people are having to use highway transportation,
that’s also going to increase your fuel costs. All of that can come off the bottom line
So now that we’ve discussed setting up a water management program with a policy and
planning stages, Andrew is going to discuss how to analyze your water usage and assess
your business for opportunity.