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T Minus 12 Hours…and NO network!

New store openings in retail are a big deal (hello, Mr. Obvious)! Let me restate, new store openings in retail are a VERY big deal! I don’t know if we have ever had to delay a store opening in our history, I certainly know it has never happened during my tenure. So when we were 12 hours away from a grand opening and still didn’t have network connectivity to the store I was sweating bullets…big time!

How we came to be in this position is not the point, but I will give a little context. We are in the midst of a redesign of our WAN (wide area network for those that hate acronyms). Rather than going with our current platform, we made the decision to go with a new platform (ok, when I say “we made the decision”…I really mean “I made the decision”). There was some confusion in placing the initial order that caused a delay. We then learned the build out would take six weeks (did I mention we were now three weeks out from opening?)! Never fear, our new platform included redundancy in the form of a 4G failover. We would just use that as our primary until the permanent connection was established. With Plan B firmly in hand we (again, I mean I) decided to move forward.

But, this is not a story about network connectivity, per se, this is a story about how a team of vendor partners came to our aid and saved our bacon! In a recent post, I wrote about the keys to a long lasting vendor relationship. These partners truly exhibited those keys and then some!

T minus 96 hours – no network connection

The signal for the 4G connection was not strong enough inside the building. Stringing a 100 foot coax across the floor and out the back door, we were able to get a solid signal. We called one of our partners to ask them to mount an external antennae. They dropped everything to come out and do a site survey (late on a Friday afternoon, mind you) and order the parts. However, they took it a step further. They took it upon themselves to contact one of THEIR partners to implement a Plan C, dropping a high speed DSL line in as a temporary solution in case Plan B did not work out. Have you ever contacted a telecom supplier and requested service in under 48 hours? Amazingly, with several strings pulled, installation was scheduled for that Monday morning.

T minus 24 hours – still no network connection

Monday morning dawned and the parts needed for the antennae installation arrived and our partner went about drilling holes in concrete walls and installing the antennae. Mid morning the telecom vendor arrived to install Plan C, the DSL line. About this same time, I was assuring my boss that we would have connectivity and the store WOULD open on time.

T minus 18 hours – STILL no network connection

I (and several other VPs and my boss) arrived on-site for the customary grand opening open house for employees and families. I made may way back to the telecom closet where I found half my team, our cabling partner, the telecom technician, and two or three others. Tensions were high! The antennae was mounted, but we were still unable to get the connection stable. The 100 foot coax was still strung out across the floor , out the door to an antennae duct-taped to a traffic pole (no I am not kidding!). Everyone was concentrating on getting the DSL (remember, that is plan C) connection established.

Time for Plan D – call our existing partner to see if the line from our old location could be swung to this one. (a week minium, that would not do). Plan E – establish a line of site connection to one of our other locations (nope – believe it or not there is a 200 foot elevation difference…who knew there was a hill in central Indiana?). Plan F – ride on the wireless of another retailer in the area – with permission of course (so what are the odds Walmart would agree to THAT request?)

T minus 16 hours – the sweat is rolling

At this point, I took a risk. I texted one of the vendors that had been courting us for a year. We had done a little business (one other time when we got in a jam) but nothing that you would write home about. (did I mention it is 5pm?…I should also mention the telecom technician was still there lending a hand, incredible service above and beyond his normal duties). Within seconds, I had an answer back from my text. We jumped on a call. He rallied a couple of his senior engineers and they jumped on a call with our engineers.

T minus 12 hours – time to brush off the resume

T minus 11 hours – 

T minus 10 hours – 

T minus 9 hours 47 minutes – WE HAVE LIFT OFF! (Well we have a network connection, at any rate)

Man that was too close! Working through all the issues together we were finally able (we in this case does not mean ME) to establish the connection and begin testing the store configurations. All was well with the world…until the next morning when Murphy struck (man, we have to fire that guy) and unrelated to the store opening, our wireless controller crashed. One of the team, installed a personal wireless router to enable the store to open on time, while others got back on the phone with the same engineers that had worked through the evening the night before to troubleshoot and resolve the issue.

Without our partners (and in some cases, their partners) we would have faced disaster. If you will bear with me on this day before Thanksgiving, I would like to thank them here: Thanks to Patrick at TWTelecom, Thanks to Scott, Tim and others at BD Managed Services, Thanks to Kelly at Lingotek, Thanks to Dwight, Cale, Tom, Greg and Richard at Sinewave, thanks to the technician from AT&T (I failed to even get his name). I would also like to thank my team for their incredible efforts under pressure: Ed, Kelvin, Jeff and Patrick THANKS GUYS!!

If anything you read here or in other posts strikes a chord, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment, hit me up on Twitter (@jtongici), find me on LinkedIn, or Google +.

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5 things that keep me up at night

As a CIO, the question gets asked a LOT…What keeps you up at night? The answer may surprise you! The truth is other than some occasional snoring (sorry honey) and a trip or two to the loo (hey, we all get old sooner or later, embrace it) not much keeps me awake at night. Maybe I am naive, but I have the privilege of working with an awesome team of professionals and except for some occasional bumps our systems run very smoothly (knock on wood). We have a great disaster recovery and business continuity plan. Business is humming along with growth in most areas. However, with all that said and while they don’t keep me up at night there are things I worry about, here is my top five, in order of “fret level”.

My Staff

The one aspect about staffing that I wrestle with continually is staff size and the ratio of permanent staff versus contract staff. Before I approve a new position or backfill of an existing position, I really think long and hard about the current workloads, future workloads and the risks to those future workloads. Several times during my career I have been faced with the horrible task of looking my teammates, many of them friends, in the eye and telling them they no longer have a job (believe it or not, some of them more than once!). I can think of very few things that would be harder to hear and that would have a greater impact on a person than losing a job. Personally, there is nothing harder a manager has to do than to have that conversation.

The other aspect about my staff that I spend a lot of time thinking about is their development. Are they learning and growing? Are they satisfied with their job? Are they getting the opportunities to advance their career? We are a small department in comparison to many IT departments so opportunities to advance are limited, that concerns me. Turnover is costly both in hard dollars and in momentum to achieving our goals. I want to minimize turnover to the extent possible. However, if someone is ready for advancement and can take that next step in their careers and we don’t have an opportunity for them, I take satisfaction in knowing I have done my job and I will do whatever I can to help them take that step.

Being Value Add

It is the goal of most IT leaders I know to be a value add to their businesses. Too often IT is seen as a cost center, a necessary evil. Yes there are processes, tasks, meetings and planning that goes into “keeping the lights on”. I admit, I get frustrated when one of our basic services fails and we have to “waste” time fixing it. We have spent a lot of time putting processes and procedures into place to minimize that time. I try very hard to spend the majority of my time and value add planning, thinking and execution.

I was at a conference a few years ago when one of the panelists described two types of IT projects: A-C projects and C-F projects. No, he didn’t mean those kind of C-F projects (we have ALL been a part of those projects)! A C-F project is one in which, no matter how great of a job you do, the best grade you will receive is a C. No one is EVER going to call you up to say “Thanks for delivering my email today, I really appreciate it”. But, have an email outage and you will be getting “F’s” from all your colleagues. On the other hand, an A-C project is one that, if you hit it out of the park, you will get a report card filled with A’s. Those are the kind of projects where I want my team spending their time. That doesn’t mean we take our eye off the ball on those maintenance projects, but even there we are looking for value add: is there a better way? is there a more cost effective way? is there a disruptive change on the horizon in that area?

Being Open

As a former mainframe COBOL programmer, I can remember dissing Windows when it first came out, not to mention laughing at people using mice (Real men don’t use mice, right Scottie?). Why would you want to run your application on a toy, put it on a machine with MIPS! Color? We had color, green AND amber! Virtualization? Aren’t virtual servers just LPARs?

Seriously though, I do continually challenge my thinking, especially, when it is based in the status quo. Several months ago I received an email that sent me over the top. It was from an employee in one of our business divisions asking where on the network he could put a program he had written so others in his department could install it. WHAT? Someone outside of IT developed software and they want to use it? They want others to use it? Others have ALREADY used it? WHAT?

After sending a scathing email to his boss’ boss and another to the VP of the division and after talking with one of my Senior Directors (who by the way, was much calmer than I), I thought, “Why not?”. What if we had a process to vet the code? What if we had a community of employees that developed as a hobby? What if we put the proper agreements in place (gotta keep the lawyers happy, right?)? After all, using this small application reportedly improved productivity on a specific task by 437%. Whether it is being open to development outside of IT, or Open Source code, or BYOD, I want to continually challenge myself to be open and think outside the proverbial box.

Consumerization

Speaking of BYOD, the whole consumerization of IT is another area I spend hours thinking about. Its about “any time, any place, any device”, its about the “appification” of software, its about the employee wanting, no demanding, their technology at work function like their technology at home. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t consider this a bad thing. I think the consumerization of IT is very exciting. I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

However, traditional IT has to change. We can no longer control everything (not that we ever could, but we thought so). Yes, I can block Facebook from the corporate network (not that I think we should, mind you), but that is not going to stop an employee from being on Facebook on their smart phone. Our traditional approach to application development will no longer work, we have to think beyond agility and think “there’s an app for that”.

I also think traditional business has to change. The whole concept of mass collaboration, brought about by socia media technology and the ever increasing bandwidth should change the way we look at almost every business and business process. THAT makes my head spin! If you haven’t read Don Tapscott’s “Wikinomics” and “Macrowikinomics” you should!

Keeping Up

When I think about keeping up I think about two areas. First, keeping up with technology. The whole tech cycle has shortened to breathtaking speed. No longer are 3, 4 or 5 year refresh cycles adequate. We have to rethink our approach to being good stewards of our IT assets and keeping up with the changes in access devices, software delivery and information access. It is a balancing act to be sure. I like the “any piece of glass” approach which almost makes the device agnostic, but can you really ever future proof your environment?

My focus on “keeping up” also applies more specifically to keeping up with our business units. We have four incredibly diverse and dynamic business units. They have minimal data integration and minimal process standardization. (Using the models Jeanne Ross defines in “Enterprise Architecture as Strategy” we would be on the border between Diversification and Coordination. This puts incredible pressure on a shared service like IT. At any given time, we may be opening a new retail store, opening a new school, expanding our maternity nursing program, or obtaining a new facilities management contract. If THAT doesn’t make your head spin, nothing will!

Wow, and I didn’t even touch on the explosion of data and how to turn it into actionable information, changing the way we measure success, new business ventures, corporate culture, organizational dynamics, corporate eco-systems, etc. etc. etc…maybe I WILL be up at night for reasons other than the trip to the loo!

If anything you read here or in other posts strikes a chord, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment, hit me up on Twitter (@jtongici), find me on LinkedIn, or Google +. 

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3 Keys to a Long Lasting Relationship (Vendor relationship that is)

Let me start off by saying, I hate the term “Vendor Relationship Management”. Like the old adage, if you have to spend time “managing and motivating” an employee, you probably have the wrong employee; I would extend that to vendors as well. I want fewer vendors and more partners. 

Webster’s defines a partnership as:

A relationship resembling a legal partnership and usually involving close cooperation between parties having specified joint rights and responsibilities. 

To me, that means several things. First of all “joint rights and responsibilities”, in other words both parties need to have skin in the game. If I am taking all the risk, there is no partnership. Second, it means fair contracts. If a contract has a clause prohibiting me from hiring their staff, it should extend to cover my staff as well. (I could talk forever about fair contracts, I have certainly seen some pretty one-side tomes) Third, it means, take some time to invest in the relationship. Get to know me, get to know my company. As an example, don’t try to sell me services that my company provides (yes that happens more often than you would believe). Some of my best business relationships didn’t turn into a “sale” for years, but have since become very fruitful for the companies involved. (thanks Jeff, Eric, Julie…) Finally, it means flexibility, to again offer a paraphrase “stuff happens”. When “stuff happens” be willing to talk through all options, not just rely on the T’s and C’s. During the economic crisis of 2008, 2009 I had the opportunity to work with several vendors to try to re-work the our deal to provide my company some relief. One firm, flatly refused to discuss options, even though I offered to extend the terms of the contract several years. Another firm, brought their senior executives to our offices, sat down with us, and worked through several scenarios that proved to be wins for both firms. Fast forward to 2012, I am now at a different company, guess which vendor I am doing business with at this organization?

That brings me to the second key: transparency. Defined as:

Characterized by visibility or accessibility of information. 

What does this mean in a business relationship? It means both parties being open and honest about all aspects of the relationship, pricing, budgets, profit margins, goals, objectives, everything. Be honest about your services. If it is not in your wheel house, you will gain much more credibility by admitting that than you will by trying to “fake it till you make it”. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Awhile back I had a vendor calling on me trying to get his foot in the door. Coincidentally, I had a need at the time for a resource with a very specific skill set. “Of course, we have someone. They are one of the tops in the field. They will be a little expensive, but worth it.” I thought I would give them a shot. Only later did I learn, the resource didn’t actually work for them, they sub-contracted them from another company, marked up the rate and put them on my project. To make matters worse, the resource actually came from another firm with whom I do business. One of these firms was invited to our partner summit, one has not been back in my office since.

The third key is trust. Trust is:

Assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something. 

Trust is probably the hardest of the three, very difficult to gain, very easy to lose. One way to earn my trust is to tell me when I am wrong. Believe it or not, the customer is not always right, especially when that customer is me! I rely very heavily on the expertise of my partners. If I am getting ready to do something you know darn well I should not, TELL ME! Along the same lines, tell me what I need to hear, not what you think I want to hear. We had a vendor a few years ago responsible for large software upgrade. We asked time and time again, if our hardware was OK. We were assured it was. Low and behold a year later, our hardware was end of life and we had to upgrade again. I truly believe the vendor was trying to save us money on the original project, but trust me, I would rather do one upgrade than two. Another quick way to earn my trust is to advise me down a path that saves me time, effort, or money even when it impacts your bottom line; even when it leads to another vendor or solution. Again, it is an investment in the long term.

By now you are asking WIIFM – What’s in it for me?  What does all this get you (other than a ticked off sales manager when you don’t hit your quota)? It gets you a seat at the table as a trusted adviser. It gets you full transparency into roadmaps and budgets. And, it gets you a relationship with someone who wants fewer vendors and more partners.

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$43,262 and all I got was a lousy t-shirt

How many of you are as frustrated with software licensing costs as I am? I actually had one publisher ask me for our tax return. When I asked why, I was stunned with the answer. “Our pricing is based on how much you can afford to pay. We have found most companies fudge on their license counts.” What? Really? Great way to start a relationship, right? I had a conversation with another publisher last week regarding their “optional” enhancement fee. Turns out it is only optional if we never add another seat. Oh, we can continue to use all the seats we have, but to buy a new seat we have to be current on the enhancement fee for all the other seats.

Think about this for a moment. Let’s suppose you go to buy a car. After spending countless hours pouring over specs, visiting showrooms, taking test drives, you’ve selected the perfect make and model for you. You whip out your wallet and plunk down your hard-earned cash, but before you drive away in your brand new ride there a just a few forms to sign. The first states, you don’t really own the car, you just have a license to use the car. Sounds like a lease, right? Wrong, there is no residual value to the car at the end of the lease, you can drive it forever, but of course at some point it will become obsolete and cease to run.

The next form for your perusal is a maintenance agreement. Yes, that’s right, there is no warranty, the car is not actually guaranteed to run and when it breaks (and it will break) you have to have a maintenance agreement for them to fix your car. You also have to pay this maintenace fee to even contact the service department. Of course, its extra if you actually want to SEE the service department, because the first level of support is in, well, some other country.

The final form in the pile is the Automobile Evolution Fee (AEF). This fee can be as high as 25% of the price of the car. What is the Automobile Evolution Fee? This is the Fee you pay so that when the manufacturer adds a new feature to the car, you can install it, whether you actually need the new feature is, well, irrelevant. The other great part of the AEF, is when the manufacturer releases a new model of the car you get the new model “free”. Of course, you have already paid for it through the AEF, and on top of that you get to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to bring the new car home, learn how to use it, and reset all those comfort settings you were used to in the old car. Not to mention, the car no longer fits in your garage, so you have to remodel it as well. The great part about the AEF, is that it is optional, unless you want to drive the car to a different state, of course, because that is a different license and to add a license feature you have to be current on the AEF for all the other states you have purchased.

Ok, all this sounds ludicrous, right? You would never stand for that at the local dealership, right? Yet, this is what the software companies expect us to do every time we buy a piece of software. I, for one, am looking for alternatives, such as open source, SaaS models, or companies that will stand behind their products.

I would love your thoughts on the approaches you are taking to combat the ever increasing cost of software and software maintenance.

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Killing me softly with…PVC

Final installment of a series examining the impacts of a “dewatering system” on an eco-system. The series began with “We have met the enemy and he is us” This post introduces the topic of the impacts of a “dewatering system” on the infrastructure of a city. Part II “It’s all related” continues the discussion with the impacts on water and rivers. Part III of the series “What watt?” looks at the direct and indirect energy use resulting from the installation of the system and the resulting CO2 emissions.

PVC or Polyvinyl Chloride seems to be everywhere these days. It’s in everything from electric wires, to toys, to portable electronic devices and of course pipes. The “dewatering system” installed underneath the new 1,000 Marriott Hotel in downtown Indianapolis consists of almost 5,000 feet of PVC pipes. These pipes are used to gather the naturally occurring groundwater and funnel it to the sump basins where it is then pumped into the Indianapolis sewer system.

PVC has been the subject of a lot of attention since its first commercial uses in the 20’s and 30’s. Throughout its lifecycle (manufacturing, use, and disposal), it has been linked to various health issues including cancer, birth defects and reproductive impairment. Many of the environmental and health issues stem from the additives used to soften the normally rigid material.

During the manufacturing process workers exposed to the vinyl chloride face an increased risk of cancer of various types. Since the link between the vinyl chloride and the cancer in workers was discovered in the 1970’s, changes in the manufacturing process have virtually eliminated the exposure to the workers. Virtually eliminated…I don’t know about you, but virtually eliminated does not make ME feel warm and fuzzy, nor does it make me want to go to work in one of those factories. However, the danger does not stop at the factory doors. The EPA found “vinyl chloride emissions from polyvinyl chloride (PVC), ethylene dichloride (EDC), and vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) plants cause or contribute to air pollution that may reasonably be anticipated to result in an increase in mortality or an increase in serious irreversible, or incapacitating reversible illness. Vinyl chloride is a known human carcinogen that causes a rare cancer of the liver.”

Another problem with PVC is its tendency to leach and off-gas its chemicals. Leaching is a process by which the carcinogens and other poisons transfer to other things that come in contact with them. This was discovered to be a significant problem in such things as soft toys that would be chewed on by infants and even in (sorry mom) some adult “toys” as well. This has led to bans on various additives in some products. Studies have shown that chemicals in the PVC can even leach into water as it moves through a pipe. Off-gassing, is the process in which these poisons are released into the air. You know that new car smell? Yep, you guessed it…off-gassing! NOT a good thing. This has led to various manufacturers (Toyota, Nissan, Microsoft and others) to eliminate PVC from their products. It has also led to retailers either reducing the number of PVC products they carry or eliminating them altogether.

Finally, disposal…products made from PVC are very difficult to recycle. Since they are made up of various additives, the process to break down the material into useful components is costly, inefficient and only so successful. Most of the products made with PVC end up in being disposed of by the consumer, either by burning it with their trash, or throwing it away in their trash, where it might go to a municipal incinerator or to a landfill. What is significant about this is the fact that when burned, PVC releases all kinds of toxic chemicals into the air, like hydrogen chloride and dioxins. (Do you know how common landfill fires are?)

If all these things are wrong with PVC, why is it still in use? The answer is simple…it’s CHEAP! Human Health vs. the Dollar…now THAT discussion is a whole other BLOG!

Conclusion-

So dear reader, I hope you have stuck with me through this series of articles. I hope they underscore the synergistic nature of our environment and the need to consider ALL impacts when trying to solve an issue. What first looks like the fast, easy, and inexpensive way out may prove to be just the opposite. Finally, I hope they inspire you to get involved in your community by asking why things are done they way they are done and seeking better and better ways to live on this planet without killing it (and ourselves).

 

 

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What watt?

Part Three of a Series: “We have met the enemy and he is us” introduces the topic of the impacts of a “dewatering system” on the infrastructure of a city. Part II “It’s all related” continues the discussion with the impacts on water and rivers.

So what does a water issue have to do with energy? Simple, you may recall from the previous posts, that the new Marriott Hotel being constructed in downtown Indianapolis has a parking garage that is three floors below grade (underground). The third floor extends below the top of the water table which required the installation of four pumps to extract the water and send it into the sewer system. These pumps run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year (and sometimes 366).

Now, I don’t know what types of pumps are installed in the Marriott or the size of the pumps nor am I an electrical engineer. However, it is reported that they are pumping a total of 1,200 gallons per minute, or 300 gallons per minute per pump. I doubt very seriously that they sized the four pumps right at 300 gpm, but let’s say for a minute they did. A quick internet search finds that a typical industrial dewatering pump capable of pumping 300 gpm requires about 460 volts of electricity and draws about 20 amps. That is the equivalent of 9.2 kWh (kilowatts per hour). Four pumps running 24 hours a day comes to about 900 kWh every day. As a comparison, the average American family uses 938 kWh every day. So, every day, the pumps use enough electricity to power a house.

As I mentioned, they probably did not size them at the bare minimum. Perhaps they put in 600 gpm pumps. One of those pumps uses 460 volts and draws 54 amps. That is almost 25 kWh per hour per pump. Four pumps running 24 hours a day would use about 2,400 kWh a day, or enough to power about 2.5 households.

We can’t have a discussion about energy use without mentioning CO2 emissions. This amount of electricity produces from 236 metric tons of CO2 a year on the low end to 629 metric tons on the high end. That is the equivalent CO2 of between 43 and 115 cars on our roads…from the dewatering pumps of one building in one city.

And since 96% of Indiana’s electricity comes from coal, consider the other impacts of burning coal…air pollution (beyond carbon), water pollution, sludge creation and storage.

There are indirect energy impacts as well. Since all of this water is being pumped (presumably) into the Combined Sewer system it has to be processed as wastewater. A typical wastewater treatment plant burns 6,000 kWh of electricity to process each million gallons of water. As we know, these pumps are flushing 1,728,000 gallons a day into the system or about 630,720,000 gallons a year. How does 3,784,320 kWh of power sound? That’s almost 11 more households of electricity. And carbon? How does another 2,195 metric tons of carbon sit with you? ANOTHER 400 cars!

Keep in mind; this is all to move water that didn’t have to be moved in the first place!

Stayed tuned for the final installment in this series, “Killing me softly with…PVC”.

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What watt?

Part Three of a Series: “We have met the enemy and he is us” introduces the topic of the impacts of a “dewatering system” on the infrastructure of a city. Part II “It’s all related” continues the discussion with the impacts on water and rivers.

So what does a water issue have to do with energy? Simple, you may recall from the previous posts, that the new Marriott Hotel being constructed in downtown Indianapolis has a parking garage that is three floors below grade (underground). The third floor extends below the top of the water table which required the installation of four pumps to extract the water and send it into the sewer system. These pumps run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year (and sometimes 366).

Now, I don’t know what types of pumps are installed in the Marriott or the size of the pumps nor am I an electrical engineer. However, it is reported that they are pumping a total of 1,200 gallons per minute, or 300 gallons per minute per pump. I doubt very seriously that they sized the four pumps right at 300 gpm, but let’s say for a minute they did. A quick internet search finds that a typical industrial dewatering pump capable of pumping 300 gpm requires about 460 volts of electricity and draws about 20 amps. That is the equivalent of 9.2 kWh (kilowatts per hour). Four pumps running 24 hours a day comes to about 900 kWh every day. As a comparison, the average American family uses 938 kWh every day. So, every day, the pumps use enough electricity to power a house.

As I mentioned, they probably did not size them at the bare minimum. Perhaps they put in 600 gpm pumps. One of those pumps uses 460 volts and draws 54 amps. That is almost 25 kWh per hour per pump. Four pumps running 24 hours a day would use about 2,400 kWh a day, or enough to power about 2.5 households.

We can’t have a discussion about energy use without mentioning CO2 emissions. This amount of electricity produces from 236 metric tons of CO2 a year on the low end to 629 metric tons on the high end. That is the equivalent CO2 of between 43 and 115 cars on our roads…from the dewatering pumps of one building in one city.

And since 96% of Indiana’s electricity comes from coal, consider the other impacts of burning coal…air pollution (beyond carbon), water pollution, sludge creation and storage.

There are indirect energy impacts as well. Since all of this water is being pumped (presumably) into the Combined Sewer system it has to be processed as wastewater. A typical wastewater treatment plant burns 6,000 kWh of electricity to process each million gallons of water. As we know, these pumps are flushing 1,728,000 gallons a day into the system or about 630,720,000 gallons a year. How does 3,784,320 kWh of power sound? That’s almost 11 more households of electricity. And carbon? How does another 2,195 metric tons of carbon sit with you? ANOTHER 400 cars!

Keep in mind; this is all to move water that didn’t have to be moved in the first place!

Stayed tuned for the final installment in this series, “Killing me softly with…PVC”.

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It’s all related!

In my previous post “We have met the enemy and he is us“, I discussed the “dewatering system” that was built for the new Marriott Hotel in downtown Indianapolis and the impact this system will have on the Combined Sewer Overflow system. Today, let’s examine some of the other impacts this system and others like it have on our environment.

John Muir once said “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” What this means is all of the systems in nature are interrelated and changes in one area can have dramatic impacts in others, in other words, when we try to outsmart nature, we inevitably screw something else up! This “dewatering system” is an excellent example; there are impacts, not only to the water systems, but also to energy, carbon emissions, human health and wildlife survival.

Water – Forget the fact that these pumps are taking what could be perfectly good drinking water (or at the very least perfectly good “process” water) and flushing it down the drain, there are other impacts to the water systems. Because the parking garage in this example was built below the water table, pumps run continuously to pump the naturally occurring groundwater into the sewer system. The effect of this pumping is to lower the water table in the area, and potentially in a large surrounding area. When the water table is lowered several things occur. First, anyone in the area that is using well water will find that their wells go dry as the water table lowers, thus requiring them to dig their wells deeper, sometimes at great expense. Next, as the water table lowers, water, being water, will follow the path of least resistance and begin to “fill in” the area. This means groundwater from a larger area will begin to move thus impacting larger and large areas. In some cases, nearby wetlands and rivers could begin to drain and dry up.

In addition, as the water table lowers, plant life that is dependent upon that water will begin to die out as its root system can no longer reach its water source. This may require additional irrigation to keep the plants alive which adds to the vicious cycle and strain on the water system. In some cases, invasive plants will migrate into the spaces left behind by the dying plants. Wildlife that depends on the native plants will die out or migrate to other areas due to lack of food.

Among the impact caused by lowering the water table is subsidence. Because the presence of ground water creates hydraulic pressure, it is able to support the weight of the soil, rock, AND BUILDINGS above it. Removing the groundwater will cause a “sinking” or settling of the earth above it. Don’t believe me? The city of San Jose is THIRTEEN feet lower today than it was 100 years ago. The problems in New Orleans were exacerbated in part by subsidence caused by the extraction of groundwater over the last century. What will be the impact to the buildings as the ground around them SINKS? They too will sink and settle causing foundation problems, and other structural and non-structural issues throughout the building or HOME!

River – While we are talking about water, let’s look at the impact on the river. According to the senior manager on the project for Marriott, the water was going to the river any way, well was it? Ground water is replenished by rain water, surface water, AND NEARBY RIVERS AND STREAMS. This water may have COME from the river not be on its way TO the river. As the water table lowers, the river could try harder and harder to refill the void, eventually drying up the river. It has happened before folks! However, let’s assume for the moment that the manager was right and the water was heading to the river. By “speeding up the process” the ecosystem of the river will be changed. Rather than the water slowly filtering through the ground (and being naturally cleaned and filtered along the way) it will be blasted into the river. This will lead to increased erosion as the water speed is faster than is natural. The increase in erosion will lead to additional sediment in the water (already the number one pollutant in Indiana). This increase in sediment will begin to kill off the fish and plant life in the river as they can no longer find food or the food dies off because of lack of sunlight that is now blocked by the sediment. In addition, many of the organisms that serve a key role in the food chain are impacted by even slight changes in water temperature. Because this water did not reach the river naturally, it will change the temperature of the water.

Energy – What a minute, I thought we were talking about water here, what does that have to do with energy? In my next post we will discuss the energy impacts (both direct and indirect) of the “dewatering systems”.

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We have met the enemy and he is us! -Pogo

What was true in 1970 when Pogo first uttered his immortal words is truer still today. At the time of this writing, my city, Indianapolis (ok, yes I live in Carmel, but much to the chagrin of many Carmelites, Indianapolis STILL is the major metropolitan city in this area), is in the midst of a 17 year project to mitigate it’s sewer overflow problem. Indy, like several hundred other cities, utilizes a Combined Sewer Overflow system. Basically, what that means is wastewater from homes and businesses (uh, sewage!) and rainwater from streets and parking lots utilize the same pipes to transport the water (and the, uh, sewage) to the treatment plants. Sounds logical, right? You only have to lay one set of pipes, excellent! Except…when it rains. That’s where the overflow part of the Combined Sewer Overflow system comes in. When the amount of “water” to be processed exceeds the capacity of the system, it is allowed to flow freely (“floatables” and all) into local rivers and streams. In Indianapolis, the amount of rain required to cause the overflow is ¼”! One quarter of one inch! In 2008, Indianapolis received a rainfall of over ¼” SIXTY times…about 6 or 7 BILLION gallons of sewage a year! Anyone want to go for a swim? How about a nice drink? Or, fish fillet? Want to be grossed out? Check out WTHR’s Bob Segall’s article at http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?S=9260797.

The good news is we are fixing the problem, to the tune of several BILLION dollars, but we are fixing it. The bad news is…we haven’t really learned anything in a hundred years. A recent article in the Indianapolis Business Journal featured the “dewatering system” of the new 1,000 room Marriott hotel in downtown Indianapolis. This $425 million project is part of our city’s plans for hosting the Super Bowl in 2012. “Dewatering System” sounds so innocuous doesn’t it? Sounds almost like a dehumidifier or something, right? So, what exactly is a “dewatering system”? Many of you have homes with basements; undoubtedly you have a sump pump. These systems are designed to funnel water to the pump where it can be moved away from the foundation of the house. They help to prevent water from leaking through the foundation of the house into your basement. On a much bigger scale, that is the type of system engineered at the Marriot. Still sounds pretty harmless, right?

The system at the Marriot has a series of almost 5,000 feet of PVC pipe, funneling water to sump wells that are four feet wide and nine feet deep. There are four pumps that run every minute of every day pumping 1,200 gallons of water a minute. That’s 1,728,000 gallons a DAY, or 630,720,000 gallons a YEAR! That is enough water to supply 10,000 households for an entire year! And, what are they doing with all that water? According to the senior project manager they are sending it “right to the [White] river”. Hmmm, so they ran a pipe west from those pumps over a ¼ mile UNDER White River State Park to the river, or was it south almost half a mile under Victory Field, or north under the Eiteljorg and the Indiana State Museum. Uh, I don’t think so Tim. If I were a bettin’ man, I’d bet they will pump 630,720,000 gallons of water each year into the Indianapolis Combined Sewer System, where it not only adds to the amount of waste water that has to be handled by the system, it also has to go through the waste water treatment facility and be processed before it goes “right to the river”.

What design issue led to the decision to pump over a ½ a BILLION gallons of water into the Combined Sewer System? The three story BELOW ground parking garage is five feet deeper than the level of the water table on the site….five feet. So, think about this…how many buildings in downtown Indy have three floors of parking, or other space below ground and are pumping just as much, if not more water into the Combined Sewer? Dozens? Hundreds? In some states, it is a criminal offense to capture the rain water that falls on your property, yet we are literally flushing billions of gallons of water each year down the drain…AND we are all paying for it. Not only are we paying for the project to overhaul the sewer system and the capacity to handle water that was not entering the sewers to begin with, but we are paying for the waste water treatment facilities and operations, and we pay for it in the damage all this water has on the river itself. One day, in the not so distant future, we are going to be desperate for water to drink. Think of the cost that will entail!

Surely in this day of Low Impact Development and Sustainable Design we can come up with better solutions than just dumping the water down the drain. How about a two story parking garage, instead of three, how about building above ground instead of below, how about using that water to flush the 1000 or so toilets in the new hotel and for other non-drinking uses, how about filtering it and using it in the hotel pool? How about building codes that require developers to USE the water on their site rather than just pumping it into the water system?

The impacts of design decisions like this one go far beyond the strain it places on our sewer infrastructure. The great environmentalist John Muir once wrote, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” In my next post, we will examine some of the other impacts of the “dewatering system” on, not only water, but energy, carbon, and human health.

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Black Liquor – A Bitter Drink

I had never heard of Black Liquor until a colleague told me about it a few weeks ago (though I do confess to drinking several Black Dogs with some locals in a bar in Mumbai India a few years back…but that is another post!). Turns out, Black Liquor is not a drink at all, but is VERY bitter to swallow.

We’ve all heard of the bank bailout, we’ve heard of the auto industry bailouts, who knew we were bailing out the paper mill industry? Who knew they even need bailing out? Who knew we were bailing them out to the tune of $4 billion a year?

In 2005 congress enacted a law as part of a highway bill that would provide a tax credit to companies that would mix alternative fuels with fossil fuels. This tax credit provided a 50 cent per gallon tax credit OR DIRECT PAYMENT. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that this credit would cost the US Taxpayers (me and you) about $61 Million. Now, dear reader, how would YOU interpret the intent of this law? Any sane person would think something that is part of a highway bill would apply to vehicles, right? Any logical person would think the intent of this bill was to reduce the amount of fossil fuels used, right? I think even my dear friend Jay would agree that those are both logical conclusions.

Ok…put that on hold for a minute, while I tell you about Black Liquor. Black Liquor is a byproduct of the paper pulp making process (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_liquor). Since the 1930’s paper mills have been using Black Liquor as a fuel to create energy for their plants. Truly green, before green was cool! Before the recovery boiler was invented in the 30’s this Black Liquor was dumped in to streams and rivers killing off untold numbers of aquatic life. Some mills now achieve over 99% recovery and reuse of this byproduct. In fact US mills produce about 28.5 megawatts of electricity from the burning of this byproduct.

So, all you environmentalists are feeling pretty good about this about now…but as Paul Harvey used to say…in a moment the rest of the story.

Somewhere in 2007, some corporate bean counter had a brilliant idea. “What if we take diesel fuel and MIX it with the Black Liquor? It will still burn in our boilers…AND we will qualify for the Alternative Fuel Tax Credit. WHAT? You are going to take a process that used zero, zip, zilch fossil fuels and introduce the burning of fossil fuels so you can get a tax credit, a refundable tax credit at that (read…a direct payment). An average mill burns about 175 million gallons of black liquor, which equates to about 90 million bucks you and I are giving them! 90 Million bucks to an average mill and the entire program was only supposed to cost 61 million! My guess is that some of the folks that own these paper mills are the some folks complaining about the mounting federal deficit, decry government bailouts and think they pay too much in personal income tax! Hypocritical?

And now? We have Canada ticked off at us! Canada! Mad at us! Their mills don’t get part of this “bail out”! In fact, this practice has lead to layoffs in Canada. (think how outraged WE would be if it were reversed!)

Congress has a lot of issues in front of it when it returns from summer vacation…health care reform, the American Clean Energy and Security Act and countless others. Please express your feelings to your representatives…let them know they need to close this loop hole to stop the bail out of the paper industry!

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