House members weigh ’smart grid’ plan
Posted on March 5th, 2009By: Katherine Boyle
E&E Daily: The creation of a national “smart water grid” and the coordination of federal water research were hot topics at a House Science and Technology Committee hearing yesterday.
As members weighed legislation designed to coordinate and improve federal water research programs from committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), scientists, environmental advocates and industry stakeholders pushed the committee to ramp up funding for water-saving innovations like the smart grid and to set national priorities for water research.
An information technology-based grid system could help the United States save between 30 and 50 percent of the water used each year, said Mark Modzelewski, executive director of the Water Innovations Alliance, an industry association made up of corporations, investors, research centers and other stakeholders.
“It is vital that an effort be made to create and fund a water information technology initiative through partnership with the [information technology] industry,” Modzelewski said. “A coordinated effort could result in a system being put in place in just a few years.”
Christine Furstoss, general manager of technology for General Electric Co.’s water and process technologies, praised a smart water grid as a “wonderful idea.” She noted there would be challenges, however, in developing adequate sensor technology and obtaining reliable data.
Nevertheless, Furstoss said the technology to implement that kind of system does exist.
Other priorities highlighted by witnesses included the need for a national water census and the need to coordinate current research funding.
Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security, said a national census with data on national water resources and use is urgently needed. He suggested the work be done by the U.S. Geological Survey via a minimum $25 million allocation every 10 years.
Water expert and University of California-Berkeley professor emeritus Henry Vaux also pointed out that funding for water resources research has remained static since the mid-1970s if inflation is taken into consideration. Today the annual federal investment in water resources research is about $700 million.
Vaux said that population growth, the expansion of irrigated agriculture and the need to protect the environment would continue to cut into the nation’s dwindling water supplies over the next century. Though he said current funding for water programs is not necessarily inadequate, Vaux noted that it lacks coordination. He added that there is little information about national priorities for water research and limited guidance about an appropriate balance among research elements.
Given these problems, Vaux praised Gordon’s bill, H.R. 1145, which attempts to address concerns raised in the 2004 National Academies report on federal water research. That study also suggested the United States is not using research dollars efficiently given a lack of coordination among agencies.
The bill would codify and authorize funds for an existing interagency Water Availability and Quality Subcommittee, which is run through the National Science and Technology Council. The subcommittee was originally established by the Bush administration in 2003.
The legislation would establish a national water initiative outreach office to support the interagency committee and serve as a point of contact on federal water activities for government agencies, organizations, academia and industry to exchange information. The office would be funded by contributions from each agency represented on the committee.
Gordon’s bill also would require the Subcommittee on Water Availability and Environmental Quality to develop a plan establishing federal research priorities for a four-year period. It would provide for a national water census that would compile water data in one comprehensive database (E&E Daily, July 24, 2008).
As the committee continues its deliberations on the matter, Gordon and ranking member Ralph Hall (R-Texas) noted that House members have the opportunity to collaborate on the legislation with the Senate, which recently passed S. 22, an omnibus public lands bill that also addresses shortcomings in the national water research program.