TUCSON, Ariz.— America's century-old water systems need to be replaced with safer, more advanced water systems that find contaminants before they reach the faucet, a leading water expert said.

“If you are going to dig up the pipe, you might as well make it smart,” said Jeanne M. VanBriesen, professor at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the university’s Water Quality in Urban Environmental Systems Program.

VanBriesen spoke at the University of Arizona April 16 to a group of about 40 people, mostly students and faculty affiliated with the Water Sustainability Program (WSP) at the UA. The program is a campus-wide partnership between five water centers, each with its own areas of expertise.

VanBriesen pointed to what she says are almost daily problems of pipe breaks and flooding in her hometown of Pittsburgh to illustrate what is happening across the country.

Better technology is part of the answer, she said.

“We want to add sensors into the urban infrastructure,” VanBriesen said.

Monitoring Water Quality in Tucson

According to Dan Quintanar of the water quality division at Tucson Water, the company currently has 23 real-time water sensors that monitor for chlorine and pH levels. The sensors are strategically located throughout the drinking water system. The Tucson Water Web site has a map that shows the most up-to-date data collected in real time.

“The next generation of instruments we are testing test for micro-organisms in the water," Quintanar said in a phone interview. "We are testing these instruments to see how robust they are.”

Tucson Water works closely with the Water Quality Center Water Village, a research facility that looks at water safety and quality. The facility is at the Environmental Research Laboratory, located by the Tucson International Airport. Water Village employs more sensors that can help detect bacteria.

“In many ways we are using the sensors in parallel to Tucson Water, except we can inject things into our system to test, where obviously they don’t,” said Mark Riley, agricultural and biosystems engineering professor at the University of Arizona and operator of the real-time sensors at the Water Village.

According to Riley, sensors like the ones that detect bacteria can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

“Just like you save up a little money every day for that brake job because you use the brake pads every day, that’s what we need to do with our (national) infrastructure,” VanBriesen said.

A Comprehensive Solution

VanBriesen emphasized the 100-year-design life of the pipes used in urban water infrastructures across the United States, and the need for an interdisciplinary effort when it comes to water quality and sustainability.

“I encourage (everyone) to work at these disciplinary boundaries and break them down,” VanBriesen said.

VanBriesen is creating a science plan for the Waters Network, funded by the National Science Foundation, in an effort to create the first comprehensive, intelligent water systems research project. The network plans to utilize researchers and experts from several disciplines to track water quality using computer sensors and data management.

Planners with the network also hope to be able to detect instances of bacteria in the water or an attack on the system, more quickly and with more specific details.

Quintanar says the sensors being tested in Tucson now can detect bacteria but they are not able to decipher exactly what type it is, only where it shows up in the system.

Issues regarding public health and water are sometimes difficult to remedy. The big problem right now is water quality monitors could tell people tomorrow that they shouldn’t have drunk the water today, Riley said.

“A smart pipe can tell me when it’s going to break or if it’s carrying water that will make you sick,” VanBriesen said.

Along with computer sensor technology comes the need for an intelligent water system comprised of one database of information from test sites across the country. This is what the Water Network aims to produce.

The Waters Network is a joint effort between hydrologists and engineers to develop tools and strategies to better predict and manage water behavior, contaminants and infrastructures.

“This is the first group to say, when it comes to water infrastructures, science matters, the engineering matters and the social science matters. The social scientists are usually the ones that get left out,” VanBriesen said.

The social science aspect of the project would incorporate more public opinion and research about the social implications of the national urban water infrastructure, including funding, costs to taxpayers and health issues.

A Joint Effort

VanBriesen and other scientists and engineers are interested not only in developing new tools and technology to help reduce flooding, water shortages and pollution, but also in engaging the public and promoting groups with a vested interest in local water problems.

“Waters Network is trying to identify who all those grassroots groups are so we can lift them all up on the same plane,” VanBriesen said.

Up and comers in Water Technology and Sustainability




Undergraduate and graduate students from many UA departments, including chemical and environmental engineering and the department of water resources, were on hand to showcase the research projects they have been working on.

Fifteen projects with titles such as “Finger Printing Water” and “Impacts of Urbanization on Ground Water Quality in the Tucson Basin” were displayed on large posters. Students have been working on these projects all year and some were awarded cash prizes in the poster competition.