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How 120Water Helps Water Systems Comply With the Lead and Copper Rule and Other Water Quality Requirements
120Water’s Lead Service Line Probability Finder helps agencies and water systems use existing data to create and complete lead service line inventories.
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o comply with a host of recent regulations, water quality professionals are turning to outside digital water companies like 120Water to help them execute water safety, compliance, and wastewater monitoring programs. Municipal Water Leader spoke with Megan Glover, cofounder and CEO of 120Water, about how more than 300 water systems across the United States use the company’s cloud-based software and digital sampling kits for everything from centralizing service line inventory data to end-to-end lead program management. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and why you started 120Water.
32 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | June 2022
Megan Glover: We are a digital water company. Our platform consists of cloud-based software, point-of-use kits, and services that water professionals at state agencies, private agencies, and water systems across the country use to manage water quality programs. The core of our business is municipal water systems across the United States, as well as nine statewide programs. We’ve grown from 3 employees to more than 70 today, which speaks to how critical water quality programs are to utilities across the country. When I first launched the business, we marketed directly to the consumer, no different from other box business models like 23andMe and Everlywell that make testing available to anyone at their doorstep. As we were launching 120Water, an overwhelming amount of regulatory change was happening at the municipal and state levels in response to the Flint crisis. I recognized that water systems were having to test water more, not only on the consumer side but also for schools and daycare centers. I wanted to see if we could interest any municipal customers in our products. Sure enough, within 6 months we had landed over $300,000 in contracts directly with municipal water systems, schools, and daycare centers. That’s when we pivoted the business to focus our solutions on municipalities and facilities that were having to address these new regulatory demands. municipalwaterleader.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF 120WATER.
Megan Glover: My background is not in water but in building cloud-based marketing, operations, and retail software technology. Immediately before starting 120Water, I worked in healthcare, building cloud-based technology for clinical laboratories. I started 120Water because I was a concerned water customer. In early 2016, I was horrified to watch the Flint, Michigan, water crisis unfold. I wanted to test my water, so I called my water system, but at-home consumer testing wasn’t a service it provided at the time. It referred me to an environmental lab. We launched 120Water in 2016 to bring affordable laboratory water testing to anyone who wants to test their tap.
Municipal Water Leader: What does 120Water do?
