DBS&A Presenting at New Mexico Water Workshop
The Rocky Mountain Section of the American Water Works Association will hold the 2023 New Mexico Water Workshop from April 20 to 21, 2023, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Related to the theme of “Securing Our Water Future,” presentation topics will include water quality, management, use and supply, treatment, distribution, system optimization, operation, and maintenance, and ethics.
Staff Engineer Grace Herrmann, EI, will present on DBS&A’s success in helping the City of Portales address water sustainability challenges. Learn more about her presentation in the abstract below.
Funding Specialist Danielle Gallo will be presenting on the feasibility of dry toilet technologies in reducing water use and reducing waste. Learn more about her presentation in the abstract below.
DBS&A Project Engineer, Chase Stearnes, PE, PMP, will also be in attendance.
Learn about DBS&A’s water planning and development capabilities here.
“City of Portales Water Woes” presented by Grace Herrmann
The sole source of water supply for the City of Portales, located in eastern New Mexico, is groundwater from wells that draw from the Ogallala Aquifer. This regional aquifer underlies eastern New Mexico and portions of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Portales is a member of the Eastern New Mexico Utility Authority, and expects to receive surface water from this regional surface water project within the next 10 years, but with the continuous decline of production from their existing wells, the City is forced to drill as many wells as possible to continue to meet demand.
In the past seven years, the City completed a series of exploratory test holes in the wellfield, and attempted to drill a number of new wells, with limited success. Based on that experience, a new strategy is being employed, including geophysical surveys and additional groundwater modeling to select the best locations for future wells.
This presentation will describe how this small community is implementing every strategy available to meet demands under declining production. These strategies, most of which come with a large price tag, include continued conservation, reuse of treated wastewater, recapture of industrial wastewater, continued well field exploration, and planning for future recharge and recovery.
“Reducing Water Use, Reducing Waste: The Feasibility of Dry Toilet Technologies” presented by Danielle Gallo
According to the 3rd quarter 2022 Flume index, Americans are flushing an average of 12 gallons of potable water per person, every day. The US EPA estimates wastewater treatment facilities process 34 billion gallons of wastewater on a daily basis—a number that doesn’t account for decentralized wastewater systems.
The dual problems of water shortages across the West and the barriers rural communities face in building, maintaining, and staffing wastewater treatment services can be mitigated with dry toilet technologies and effective greywater systems; yet these technologies have lagged behind other proposed solutions in community water management.
Do dry toilets work? Are they cost effective? Will they be accepted by a population raised on flush toilets? What are the potential benefits and the known shortfalls of dry toilet systems on a residential and municipal scale?
This presentation will examine these questions and explore the various types and effectiveness of dry toilet technologies, in the context of current accepted wastewater treatment practices.