Environmental extremists and overzealous bureaucrats

We often cite as the challenges that water companies face: increasing and urbanising population, ageing infrastructure, water scarcity and more extreme weather events, more demanding customers, an ageing workforce, and difficulties in raising or accessing capital.

The congressmen who are pictured around the President of the United States of America when he signed the Presidential Memorandum on Promoting the Reliable Supply and Delivery of Water in the West, issued on October 19, 2018, believe that it is environmental extremists and overzealous bureaucrats who have created the water crisis in the West of the USA.

The Memorandum focuses mainly on a list of projects that need to be progressed but seem to have got stuck in the bureaucratic mud (of the swamp, presumably).

The Memo has a section that requires, to the maximum extent practicable, and subject to relevant laws, the Secretary of the Interior to direct appropriate bureaus to promote the expanded use of technology to ‘Increase Water Reliability.’ Such technologies are identified as: desalination, recycled water, and real-time monitoring of wildlife and water deliveries.

i2O has one of these technologies – a solution for the monitoring of clean water delivery through distribution network – so I guess we will be seeking the support of the Secretary of the Interior of the United States of America in promoting it legally to the maximum extent practicable.

However, we don’t have a solution for the monitoring of wildlife. But we do provide solutions that help water companies to make the most of existing water delivery infrastructure, reducing or deferring the requirement for investment in supply infrastructure. Perhaps these will get a mention in a future Memo.