Olympic-Sized Cleanup

Olympic-Sized Cleanup

In honor of the 2024 Paris Olympics starting later this week, we’re taking a look at Paris's big (big, as in $1.5B+ spent big) push to clean up the Seine River in order for athletes to safely swim in it this summer. In a podcast from Science Quickly (aptly named Cleaning Up Paris’s Poop River for the Olympics), the hosts talk about how the city has built a huge basin to hold sewage and stormwater to prevent overflow into the river, but bacteria levels are still a problem, especially after heavy rains. They mention that Paris has no backup plan for the marathon swimming event, banking on the cleanup working. This effort isn't just for the Olympics—if it ends up working, it could make the Seine a swimmable river for locals again for the first time since swimming was banned in 1923.

MORE: Paris Mayor swam in the Seine on Wednesday to show it’s actually safe amid “poop protests.”

Top Water Systems

The team over at bobvila.com recently released what they consider the best water systems. Here are the top picks:

• Best Overall: Yarna Capacitive Electronic Water Descaler System because of it’s easy installation and low maintenance

• Best Bang For The Buck: iSpring ED2000 Whole House Water Descaler because it’s (go figure) affordable but effective

• Upgrade Pick: Aquasana Rhino Whole House Water Conditioner & Filter due to its ability to filter multiple contaminants

• Best Whole-House: AO Smith Whole House Salt-Free Descaler specifically for it’s low maintenance and reliability long-term

• Best Electric: Eddy Electronic Whole House Water Descaler because it’s effective and easy to setup

WQA Podcast: Recurring Revenue

The WQA podcast team has been busy! We’re going back-to-back, this week taking a look at their recent Recurring Revenue podcast:

• Guest is Mike McGowan from McGowan Water Conditioning in Mankato, MN.

• McGowan’s rental department is ~30% of their total revenue. The others are sales of new equipment (45%), service (12%), and salt delivery (10%).

• Mike likes to line up costs with revenue for his 4 departments—for example, the salt delivery department does 10% of revenue so they are burdened with 10% of costs (advertising, phone calling, bills, etc.).

• The team estimates that salt delivery has declined roughly 50% in the last 18-20 years—not from a decrease in customers but from the efficiencies gained from metered water softeners.

• When talking about slow months, McGowan says “with our recurring revenue, if you do have that slow month, it just really helps you through those bumps."

BONUS: Click here to listen and view the full transcript, auto-chapters, and more.

From Reddit

Love it or hate it, Reddit is a popular platform for many different industries including water treatment. Communities like r/water and r/WaterTreatment are active and discussing interesting things! Here are some posts that caught our eye from the last week:

• If a reverse osmosis system is made of plastic, wouldn’t that make your water filled with microplastics? (link to post)

• I had the worst well water, but I finally solved it. (link to post)

• I had my 500' well hydrofracked and then tested. Is what I’m being told/ quoted a good solution? (link to post)

What else is happening:

• In news outside of the U.S., A.O. Smith is buying Asian water purification business Pureit from Unilever in $120M deal

• SpringWell says these are the top 10 states with the best tap water

• Family-owned Beauchamp Water Treatment has a fun YouTube channel with "Love Your Water!" how-to videos

• The LA Business Journal writes about how Phyn leak detection devices use AI to detect leaks and automatically shut off water