News Beat

primary potable water source, which is fresh groundwater from the UFA.

The PRWC experience indicates that a cooperative approach among local utilities is preferred to take advantage of the significant economies of scale of larger projects, which is particularly significant for brackish groundwater desalination because of the high costs of concentrate disposal options.

References

• CFWI (2018)) Central Florida Water

Initiative, Water for Tomorrow. https:// cfwiwater.com/ (accessed 9/5/2018). • CFWI (2020) Central Florida Water

Initiative. Regional Water Supply Plan 2020.

A Comprehensive Plan for Orange, Osceola,

Polk, Seminole, and Southern Lake Counties. • Force, J. (2020) Nothing Goes to Waste at the

Southwest Regional Wastewater Treatment

Facility in Polk County, Florida. TPO (Treatment Plant Operator). https://www. tpomag.com/editorial/2020/06/nothinggoes-to-waste-at-the-southwest-regionalwastewater-treatment-facility-in-polkcounty-florida. • John, D. E., and Rose, J. B. (2005) Review of factors affecting microbial survival in groundwater: Environmental Science &

Technology, 39, 7345-7356. • John, D. E., Rose, J. B., and Karmarainen, A. (2004) Survival of fecal indicator bacteria, bacteriophage and protozoa in Florida’s surface and groundwater, Final Report of the Fate of Microorganisms in Aquifer

Study. Brooksville: Southwest Florida Water

District, and West Palm Beach: South Florida

Water Management District. • Lisle, J.T. (2016) Natural inactivation of Escherichia coli in anaerobic and reduced groundwater. Journal of Applied

Microbiology, 120, 1739-1750. • Mullin, M. (2020). The effects of drinking water service fragmentation on droughtrelated water security. Science, 368, 274-277. • PRWC (2020) Polk Regional Water

Cooperative. Our Role. https://prwcwater. org/. • PRMRWSA (n.d.) Peace River Manasota

Regional Water Supply Authority. https:// regionalwater.org/water/. • Rayer, S., and Wang, Y. (2019) Projections of Florida Population by County, 2020–2045, with Estimates for 2018. Bureau of Economic and Business Research, Florida Population

Studies Volume 52, Bulletin 183, April 2019. • Water Conserv II (n.d.) Water Conserve II.

Beneficial Water Use. http://waterconservii. com/. S

Raftelis acquired Westin Technology Solutions on Nov. 1, 2021, to enhance its consulting focus on the effective use of business technologies, including utility billing and work and asset management optimization.

“Adding Westin’s expertise in utility asset and customer management technologies complements what we already do and allows us to provide new services to our utility clients in a particularly difficult area—managing the planning, selection, and implementation of modern utility billing and maintenance management solutions to replace outdated, suboptimal systems,” said Peiffer Brandt, Raftelis president and chief executive officer. “Together we can better serve water and wastewater utilities that need to evaluate, upgrade, replace, or optimize their customer information system or computerized maintenance management system solutions.”

Raftelis helps local governments and utilities thrive by providing management consulting expertise to help the leaders of these organizations create the change they seek. They’ve helped more than 600 organizations in the last year alone. Raftelis works in all areas of management consulting, including finance, assessment, communications, technology, executive recruitment, and strategic planning.

The Raftelis team includes leading local government and utility consultants, many of whom are former local government managers, utility directors, and public-sector employees. Raftelis consultants are located throughout the United States and focus on public sector work in North America and beyond.

R

Two of Florida’s largest cities have ended their water emergencies now that COVID-19 hospitalizations have declined drastically in the state.

In August, the Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC) asked residents to stop watering their lawns or washing their cars because liquid oxygen that’s used for treating the city’s water was being diverted to hospitals for patients suffering from the virus. The utility made the decision as it faced the prospect of getting only half of its usual shipment of liquid oxygen used for water treatment. Since the 1990s, OUC has used liquid oxygen to remove the slight discoloration and rotten-egg smell that is found naturally in Florida’s water supply.

The Tampa Water Department also started using chlorine instead of its usual liquid oxygen method to disinfect its water of viruses and bacteria because liquid oxygen was being diverted to local hospitals.

On Oct. 12, 2021, OUC officials said that residents can resume their normal water use, including irrigating their lawns and washing their cars. In Tampa, officials at the water department said they were going back to treating the 82 million gallons of drinking water produced each day with liquid oxygen.

“We were fortunate that we were able to quickly switch over to using chlorine as our primary way to disinfect the water. Not every water treatment plant affected by the shortage of liquid oxygen had that flexibility,” said Chuck Weber, director of the Tampa Water Department. “The resumption of regular liquid oxygen deliveries lets us return to our normal operations.”

About 40 percent of the potable water in Orlando is used for irrigation, but Orlando users only cut back water consumption by 16 percent, hitting a low of 76 million gallons, indicating the restriction wasn’t universally embraced. Nevertheless, OUC officials said they were able to get through the crunch and averted the need for a boil-water alert. “With our community’s help in reducing the demand on our system, we were able to get through this difficult time together,” said Clint Bullock, OUC general manager and chief executive officer.

R

Federal authorities are warning about a rise in ransomware and other threat activity targeting local water and wastewater facilities in the United States. Both information technology and operating technology are being targeted at these facilities using spear phishing attacks against unsuspecting personnel to gain network access.

The joint advisory, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security

Agency (CISA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Security Agency, has tracked attacks over the last two years. It follows an August attack against a California wastewater facility using the Ghost variant ransomware and a July attack against a facility in Maine using ZuCaNo ransomware, which used remote access to enter the system.

Many of the threats are targeting systems Continued on page 73