Nature ensured infinite renewal of water for billions of years.
But Nature has been overloaded with excessive contaminant discharges that degrade downstream water resources to the point that often this water cannot be used to produce drinking water or for irrigation.
Without fresh thinking, innovation and insight there can be no resolution to the Global Water Crisis
Freshwater resources continue to be degraded at an alarming rate globally. Tipping points are being reached where toxic CyanoHABs dominate water bodies to devastating effect. Toxic CyanoHAB blooms are becoming more widespread, more frequent and more intense. This is a race against time.
A fundamental scientific truth is the fact that every water body is a “biome” or “biotic system” and is therefore governed by Systems Theory. Without understanding Systems Theory we can never manage water resources effectively.
The effect of Man’s engineering has been to disrupt the balance at the nexus of Water, Energy and Biomass. Nutrient overloads are driving the excessive formation of Biomass in the form of algae and toxic Cyanobacteria. Re-harmonizing and aligning the Nutrient Cycle and the Water Cycle is the challenge that lies at the heart of the Global Water Crisis.
Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) strategy is not fit for purpose if it is not a pathway to Renewable Water.
Renewable Water cannot be achieved through concrete and steel infrastructure alone.
The days of Water Resource Management strategy focused on the quantitative aspects of water supply logistics are over.
Equally, Water Resource Management focused on mitigating and slowing down the inevitable outcome of such flawed strategy with palliative mitigation measures is tantamount to sabotage. A slow-motion train crash, is still a train crash.
Continuing to manage water resources by extending the water logistics network to supply high density usage areas under the current paradigm is self-defeating. It degrades water quality and impedes reusability. Effective solutions can only be found by improving the reusability of water through the adoption of the Renewable Water paradigm.
Renewable Water was the natural order for hundreds of millions of years.
What we have done over the last few hundred years is degrade Nature’s ability to sustain Renewable Water by overloading and overwhelming this natural order.
In many ways this is understandable. We got carried away with the euphoria of the empowerment we gave ourselves with the technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution. This set up virtuous circles of population growth, agricultural growth and economic growth that created the “first world” economies and the “first world” urban lifestyle. These virtuous circles powered what were referred to as “economic miracles” for decades, that the rest of the world understandably aspires to emulate.
Water is renewed by removing contaminants.
Contaminants in water are nutrients that drive Biomass formation. That is because the Sun provides a constant Energy source that drive photosynthesis in any aquatic environment. Understanding and managing the dynamics at this Water-Energy-Biomass nexus (the WEB Nexus) is critical to achieving Renewable Water.
Renewable Water is about improving the performance and efficiency of the Water Cycle by managing and maintaining quality for maximum reusability.
“Reusable” doesn’t mean a second-class water quality suitable only for watering the garden or washing cars. The objective is to maintain water quality throughout the Water Cycle at a standard good enough to be drawn by a water purification plant to produce potable water.
This means you would see evidence of Renewable Water throughout the Water Cycle.
Water, Energy and Biomass are each recognized to be critical resources in their own right.
What is more poorly recognized and understood is the interplay and interdependency between them. Unless and until we understand this Nexus, and develop the ability to better manage its complexity, sustainable resource management will not be possible and disaster will result.
We are making progress on the Energy front because there are alternatives that we can pursue. However, there are no alternatives to Water or Biomass, so a different approach is needed.
Our solutions simplify the complex trade-offs between:
Our solutions are effective in addressing virtually any organic contamination in water.
This means that the markets we are able to serve include municipal sewage, livestock operations from dairy, cattle feedlots, poultry and piggeries to slaughter houses and meat rendering plants, food processing, oil and gas (fracking) and intensive aquaculture operations.
The Biotechnology Solution Platform give us the ability to configure and adapt Solution Designs to accommodate the large variety of treatment processes, and a surprisingly wide range of variations and modifications to recognized standard processes that have been implemented in various parts of the world over the past half century.
By enhancing the efficiency of biochemical and microbiological processes we are able to improve performance to the extent that effective hydraulic and organic capacity can be increased and maintained above original theoretical design capacity, thus obviating, postponing or reducing the capital expenditure required for wastewater treatment infrastructure to keep pace with growth.
The data provided demonstrates the scope of improvements achieved over a range of key parameters in completed projects across anaerobic and aerobic processes and a variety of plant designs and size.
The ultimate aim of wastewater treatment discharge quality should be that it is good enough to feed directly into a water purification plant to produce drinking water.
This has been achieved using the Biotechnology Solution Platform.
The rapid, accelerating degradation of bulk water resources as they succumb to eutrophication is the single biggest threat to sustainable water supply and water and food security globally.
In many ways this is a self-inflicted catastrophe because it is the consequence of urbanization, population growth and the highly engineered water resource management strategies and infrastructure that we have created over the past few hundred years. We have been the engineers of our own demise.
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Eutrophication has been steadily progressing in bulk water impoundments globally for decades. Toxic CyanoHABs have become and epidemic and are plaguing more water bodies, with more intense blooms that last longer every year.
A lot of governments bodies, water utilities, consulting engineers and lake management associations are spending, and in most cases wasting, huge amounts of money on treatments and “solutions” that not only do not improve the situation, they actually make eutrophication and the risk or intensity of CyanoHABs worse.
To ensure that you make a wise decision when selecting a solution, you need to see evidence of success in addressing the root causes and all the consequent symptoms of eutrophication. Treating symptoms alone is a waste of money.
It is only by understanding root causes and the need for a holistic systemic solution that you will ensure that you are not fooled by sales pitches touting temporary symptomatic treatments. By having the knowledge to be able to specify the full range of evidence of holistic success, you will ensure a dilgent procurement and selection process is followed and responsible decisions are made that all will satisfy all stakeholders.
There are a common set of root causes that drive eutrophication and create all the different symptoms that catch our attention.
If you get fooled into trying to combat each symptom you just get drawn into a costly and futile game of “Whack-A-Mole”.
An effective solution must systematically address root causes, and because it does so, all symptoms will be remedied.
The success of the Eutrophy Solution can be seen not only in obscure chemical or phycological parameters, but in the response of Nature itself.
Eutrophication is the single greatest impediment to effective, sustainable IWRM and Renewable Water. This is because eutrophication happens systemically, progressively and chronically, so it develops “a life of its own” as it appropriates feedback mechanisms that reinforce and entrench the eutrophic condition.
This enables eutrophication to become pervasive throughout water systems, affecting canals, rivers, lakes, dams, and reservoirs. Eventually, as was made brutally clear in Florida in 2018, when eutrophic conditions in freshwater systems become contiguous with eutrophic conditions in coastal marine environments, eutrophication and toxic CyanoHABs seize water resources in a lethal vice grip.
This has meant that in our role as leaders and innovators, we have had to maintain our research and development efforts to ensure that the Eutrophy Solution is scalable and adaptable for application in all such environments, conditions and situations so that we can rise to the challenges of the present and the future.
Our Biotechnology Solutions provide a platform for innovation in water resource management that ranges from policy and strategy to effective point solutions and interventions for site specific projects and outcomes.
This means that the roles we take on and the Clients that we provide services for are equally diverse.
Nitrogen is significant because it is a nutrient that fuels weed, algae and cyanobacteria growth, and also because excess nitrate in drinking water is toxic, particularly to infants.
The graph shows how Total Nitrogen levels were reduced below the targeted level within a few weeks of commissioning the solution in this large drinking water reservoir.
The graph opposite shows that Nitrate and Nitrite levels in the sediment were reduced significantly between start-up in 2011 and 2013.
Municipal
Livestock
Oil Gas & Fracking
Aquaculture
Anaerobic Digestion
Activated Sludge & BNR
Trickling Biofilters
Pond Systems