Bridging the Tech Gap: Innovation in the Water Industry

Welcome, everyone, to another short audio edition of Innovation Flow Podcast. Today, we are on site on location at the NAWQA leadership meeting, and I am privileged to be here with some innovation leaders in the industry. I'm here with Jay Bernis, general manager and CEO of Hampton Roads Sanitation District, which is a leader in innovation technology research, all of that. Also with us is Peter Van Rye. You've talked to or seen Peter before on a few episodes here, but Peter is the director, if you recall, of South Platte Renew, which hosts the podcast, the Park Innovation Podcast. So welcome, gentlemen. Thanks for being here.

No, thanks for having me.

Thank you, Blair.

All right, I've been looking forward to this since we set it up, which wasn't that long ago. I appreciate you guys altering your schedules to be here today. So I'm gonna start with Jay. Can you talk a little bit about innovation as far as Hampton Roads Sanitation District and what you got going over there?

Yeah, for sure. But just a little bit about hrsd. We're located in Eastern Virginia, roughly east of Richmond. If you're familiar with Virginia, we're the 14th largest wastewater utility in the country. We serve 1.9 million people, 20 cities and counties. And so on the innovation front, we have the largest RD group in the country. We have 23 people, five pH, eight people working on their PhDs. And so we have this really crazy vision. We want to create the Silicon Valley of water technology in Hampton Roads. And to me, as an engineer, it's really just an optimization problem, right? Like, what are your existing assets, and how can you leverage those assets to be bigger, better, more important? So, because HRC is a community leader, the idea is like, well, what else can we do? And we can be a driver for economic development, and we can leverage all of our innovation, all of our R and D, to drive that. That economic development. So we've got this really cool innovation ecosystem that we're building. And so the simple way to think about it is idea, test and invest is kind of what we're trying to do. Take an idea from whether it's a startup from hrsd. HRSD has a number of patents. Many of them are with DC Water. We're probably one of the only utilities in the country that actually collects royalties on their patents. We're building university partnerships, but we're also partnering with entities like imagine H2O and Xylem innovation Labs and being part of that pipeline. And then probably one of the most unique things about our utility is our ability to test technology at scale. What's unique about HRSD is because Virginia is so flat. We have 14 wastewater plants and so they're all different sizes. 50,000 gallons per day, up to 54 million gallons a day. So our ability to test technology at scale is pretty unique. And then part of the ecosystem is we want to have venture capitalists and we have industry partners as well. Ideally, what we want to be is tech enablers. And so that's what we're trying to do.

Nice. Why did HRSD and yourself, why did you make this commitment to technology? Why do you think it's important to the industry or to the future?

Yeah. So at hrsd, innovation is in our DNA. Like one of the first things we innovated was the Virginia initiative process. It's a patented process. It's a plant we built in the 80s and it's all about nutrient removal, really. It started with the Chesapeake Bay. It's the country's largest estuary and it suffers from nutrient pollution. A lot of that nutrient pollution comes from wastewater plants. And so we really doubled down on R and D because at the end of the day we're always researching ways to keep our repair costs low. And so that's really the driving force behind all of our R and D. And really we're focused on process intensification and decarbonization.

Yeah, and Peter, I know that's. That sounds eerily similar to what you're always saying as far as, you know, investing up front for these long term gains. Can you talk a little bit about SPR's focus on innovation and how it maybe differs or ties right in with HRSD's philosophy?

Yeah, I think first and foremost, if I step back, you know, Jay and I met each other a few years ago through our NAWQA work. And it was only after the first one or two conversations it really clicked as, wait a minute, we're thinking about this differently both at HRSD and at South Platte, and we have this different way of thinking about how we can innovate this industry and innovate from a utility LED space, as opposed to oftentimes, utility is the last entity to the table. How do we as utilities drive that innovation? How do we take the lead in creating environments that foster and develop innovation? And so, as Jay and I have talked over the last couple years, there's what he just described from an HRSD perspective is really this awesome intersection of capital and companies that are on these leading edges of innovation. And HRSD driving that. I think from South Platt, we're a smaller entity, so we serve 300,000 people, we have one plant that's 50 MGD, but we can be very focused in terms of how we work innovation in that one plant. And I think our vision is that innovation is so integrated. I keep trying to think of analogies for this, and the one I've come up with most recently is that if you go anywhere into our plant site, there's an outlet where you can plug in, you can get electricity. And so that plugging in to get electricity throughout anywhere in the plant site, if we somewhat use that as an analogy for innovation, how can we make it as easy as plugging into the wall to get electricity to actually plug in, to innovate some kind of technology that's associated with our industry and specifically our plant. And so it's a very similar model in the sense that it's trying to. We're trying to initiate and drive and push the innovation. And I think there's so much available space for utilities to move in and start to drive innovation. These new approaches and these new models I think is about as exciting as anything I ever worked with. And the fact that we're starting to really partner up with other entities like Jay and HRSD is just makes it exciting and fun.

Yeah. Yeah. I like your new analogy. It reminds me of like the airport when we used to have to hunt down a USB port and people were scrambling for a port, and now you can find them under the seats and, you know, throughout the airport. I don't know, maybe we should cut that out.

Keep it. I think it's right. It's good.

But I love what Peter's talking about because it really speaks to the fact of this gap that we're trying to fill in our industry. Right. There's this huge technology gap where you could have this startup that has this brilliant idea. But utilities are notoriously slow in adopting technology. Right. And so how can we help enable these technologies so that they can launch? And so one of the things that we've learned personally is like, through one of probably our most prolific patent, it's called Indense. It's a gravimetric selector, a hydrocyclone. Was that it's slow going. I mean, it probably has taken six to seven years for it to sell at least 36. 36 units. But now our doubling rates a year and a half. Because nobody wants to be the first.

Yeah.

People want to see the data, people want to see other references. Where is it installed now? It's installed at 100 places around the world. And so now, of course. Yeah, now that, like Everybody has a Tesla or everybody has this now, like, and that's what I think as being tech enablers, you can get a number of utilities that can use these technologies that actually make sense. And so we have this really cool case study of a company we introduced to South Platte called Crew Carbon and another company called Planetary. And basically they do wastewater, ocean alkalinity enhancement and they sell carbon credits on the back end. So this is a good case study for us because, you know, both of these companies came to pilot at hrsd. We love this tech so much, we actually issued an RFP to install it at other locations throughout the district. And so the idea and the vision is that they can leverage our brand, use us as a reference and scale throughout the country, throughout the world. Because this is a really cool technology. And so it's just a really cool case study.

Yeah, and I think this is. Jay hit on something that he and I have talked about, which brought to my attention, which is so many of these technology providers need references and they need reference sites. And if it's, if it's hard to even get the ability to install and try your system out, then how do you actually build the credibility and the testing to make sure that you have a viable product? If we create the opening, or not even the opening, but we create the environment that, that actually attracts and nurtures that kind of growth and development, then they can actually scale up faster and they can create innovation and products that solve our problems faster and get them implemented faster. So it's that whole idea of references that I wasn't really thinking about, but when we were talking about it, I was like, yeah, that's exactly it. It's brilliant.

And that utility driven piece, it's like you're hearing it from a utility, not someone trying to make money off you. It's an industry entity saying, look, we've looked at this and, and we endorse it, or we found this to be a problem or whatever. In that industry driven part I think is about, it's like getting a reference from someone you know versus a total stranger. You know, you're always going to go with the.

Well, I think one of the unique things about doing this from, from a utility perspective, and maybe you can comment on this too, Jay, is that, that we, our job is we're not profitable entities, but our job is to drive value for our customers and our ratepayers. And so anything that we can do, and some of the examples that Jay's talked about, which is actually generating revenue back to the Entity is a way of creating more value for the customer. I think the best example we have at SPR is our direct pipeline injection gas injection system which actually just paid off its initial investment last month. And so it's now hit an ROI to the point where it's now a positive revenue generating system. It was the first of its kind in the 10 state Excel area and you have to, you have to take that leading edge. But when it works out, it can drive tremendous value for our customers and ratepayers.

Yeah, I totally agree. And so like, you know, probably our best innovation, probably most game changing innovation is called detour. It's leveraging, it's pdna, it's leveraging the Anamox bacteria. And so we have the first plant in the world doing mainstream deammonification. And so that saves us a million dollars a year in O and M because it uses 50% less power, 80% less chemicals, but because it's a great, it's great at process intensification. We saved 100 million in capex.

Wow.

And so again like to your point about innovation and demand side innovation is what we call it is utility driven innovation, is that those are the kinds of gains that you can reap through this innovation process. And one of the things that we recently did in the last couple of weeks is partnering with our university in Virginia, it's called Virginia Tech. And one of the things that these professors may not know what the industry perspective is, what are our problems? They could be doing research for the sake of research.

Right.

But if we can help focus their research to help solve problems. And so one of our ideas is like how many utilities partner directly with the university to drive that demand side innovation. Right. And to drive that research in an area that can actually solve a problem that can actually be commercialized. So you know, the idea and the vision is all of these federal grants are drying up. Right. And so the way you're going to get private money in to innovation is you've got to be commercializable. And so that's one of the things. We just visited Blacksburg a few weeks ago and talked to them. I was like, there's a huge opportunity. There's not that many universities are investing in wastewater research, but it's very commercializable. There's a huge market for in the wastewater sector. And so that's how we're going to try to bring in private money because we know the federal money is drying up.

Well, I think that's, we do the same thing at SVR with the the connection to universities and we see that as our connections with our local universities in Colorado. More specifically, although we are connected with University of Virginia.

Yeah.

On one of our biogas. So it's interesting intersection there. But we, but we see that as a way of bringing resource into the utility because you're getting the best and brightest minds to dedicate their time and research to solving the problem on our site. And it's a way of leveraging resource in without spending additional money to buy that resource or purchase that resource. So I think that looking beyond just the traditional way of innovation to trying to find all these different ways that we can leverage so many opportunities out there from a resource perspective, again goes back to driving the value for the. For our customer. And I'd be remiss if I didn't thank you for the PDNA source bugs that we have that we are actually using that we are actually piloting right now at sbr. And I'd be remiss if I didn't thank you, Jay, for providing us those.

We can make our own and now we can share it.

Have you ever been thanked for providing bacteria before, Jay?

This is a first we all the time.

Well, I just heard the other day they closed the off of the EPA Office of Research and Development. So I think the whole research, you know, finding other places that do the research is important. So this is.

Yeah, it's gonna be more incumbent on us to, to find partners to, to do this kind of stuff so well.

And there's. And there's so many different gaps in the. That will be created. Research gaps that will be created that can be that there's all kinds of opportunity for not just, not just us, but other utilities to fill these gaps and drive research in a way, research and innovation in a way that is not traditional and doesn't look to these external traditional funding sources. And I think that it's the, it creates opportunity, I guess is the thing when something like this happens, it creates opportunity. And fortunately for both of our organizations, we've been working on this for years. So we've been working on park since 2019. You've been working on your innovation program for more than a decade. And so because the mindset is set up to look at innovation this way, we're uniquely positioned for when an opportunity like this, you know, presents itself because where's the research and innovation going to go if this whole area of EPA is, is, is being shut down? And, and so I think that the ability to be positioned is part of that, that forward thinking. Mindset that both our entities share.

Yeah, I was thinking that as both of you talk, it's like you both see things in terms of opportunity, not limits or things hold you back. But how can we get make things better and take what we have and leverage it and create opportunities or find those opportunities. So I think that's great. I know both of you are busy and there's meetings going on, board meetings. You're both on the Naqua board. But I want to get into one thing you mentioned, and I saw this somewhere in an article about treating with lasers. So I got to hear about that because years ago people said, what's the future of treatment? I used to joke around they're gonna be doing it with lasers in the future. But I was messing around. You're talking for real. And then I wanted to get to the interesting question to close us out. But we'll get to that after. Tell us about the laser, Jay.

Yeah, so in Eastern Virginia, we have a DOE Department of Energy Particle Accelerator laboratory called Jefferson Labs. And so we've partnered with them to use their electron beam. You know, these are a bunch of physicists and they've got this crazy electron beam and they want to use it in the water sector. So to your point about like, hey, we've got to get more people in our industry thinking about how partnering with folks to help us solve our problems. We worked with them and we published a paper a couple of years ago about removing 1,4 dioxane from the water. So if we weren't talking about PFAS, we'd be talking about 1,4 dioxide. So we partnered with them and we published this really cool paper in the IWA about using their electron beam to destroy 1, 4 dioxide. So now we are working with them on PFAS. And so they think that they can use their electron beam to destroy PFAS concentrate to regenerate gac. Because if you think about it, the only study I knew to regenerate GAC is a microwave study that they're doing in Clemson. And if you know, if you're following the water sector, by 2031, the majority of the water utilities are looking at granular activated carbon based treatment trains to deal with PFAs. But that only soaks up the PFAS like a sponge. But so now the PFAS is in the gac. So now what do you do? You incinerate it. And what happens to the PFAS when you incinerate? Does it go in the air? Does it actually become destroyed? Well, they think that they can actually regenerate the TAC and destroy the PFAS with their electron beam. And so, again, partnering with these national laboratories, trying to find different. Because I feel like it's going to take, like a national lab. Right. A DOE funded national lab to deal with this PFAS issue. So it's really exciting that we're partnering up with them on this.

Yeah. This whole industry is. And things like this amaze me. If you tell people I'm in the wastewater business, they think, oh, you're in the sewers blowing. You know, we're talking laser treatment of.

You know, we work with lasers.

We work with lasers. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. All right, let's get to the interesting question. It's about innovation, but not wastewater. You both. Peter mentioned Ozzy Osbourne's passing, I think, yesterday. And so. And I haven't prompted you guys, for the listeners, this is gonna be, you know, right off the cuff. But what do you think is the most innovative thing that changed rock and roll in history? Or what's a big one that's changed rock and roll? Maybe it was Ozzy, maybe it was something else. But what. What's the point in rock and roll or an artist where you said that person really changed things? Who wants to go first? Peter, since you suggested the question like this, I'm gonna go with you.

Yeah. And so I. I think as a. As a fan of Ozzy and being disappointed in his past and having seen Ozzy and Black Sabbath a couple times over, over my time, I think when you create a genre that is a. That is a. A monumental shift.

Yeah.

And. And what he did with the other members of Black Sabbath in the late 60s or the 70s, to create a whole genre that there's a. There's a multitude of bands that trace back to that genre. That, to me is. If you're creating a genre that didn't exist, that's why I think it's such a. There's such. He's such a remarkable individual. It's been, he said, a remarkable career.

Yeah.

And.

And to see the. To be able to step back and see what. What the. What the effect has been has got to be incredible.

Jay, you're up. How about you?

All right, so I'm not a huge rock and roll person, so I'm gonna give you a different spin.

All right.

Reggae.

Okay.

Yeah. Reggae, rock. So revolution, tribal, seed, stick figure. So this whole evolution of transforming, like roots reggae into this reggae rock genre is huge. And so that's the type of music that I listen to and I think it's only been in the last decade but it's really taken off with these huge festivals, multi day festivals. So much fun.

Yeah. Nice. Yeah, it's kind of the same theme of taking something, expanding it and going all directions with it. Good. Cool. Well, thanks again for being here on Innovation Flow podcast audio short version. And to the listeners, thanks for listening. If you like the show, remember to give us a five star rating on whatever podcast platform you're listening on and tell a friend, tell an Aussie lover, tell a reggae listener and we'll build the audience that way. And thanks again, Jay Vernis for being here. I really appreciate that you took the time out of your day and shared some of the stuff he's doing and thank you, Peter Van Ryck for sharing with us also.

Always a pleasure, Glenn.

Oh wait, I didn't have my phone turned up.