Revelations from Texas water crisis in the wake of winter storm
HAOYANG LI, WEIJIA MA and QIHAN LI: Nearly three-quarters of the United States has been covered in ice and snow in recent days by an unprecedented winter storm. As of February 21, the crisis had killed at least 58 people in the United States, left millions of homes and businesses without water or electricity for several days, frozen roads, closed airports and severely disrupted delivery and inoculation of the vaccines.
On February 19, President Joe Biden approved a major disaster declaration for Texas and ordered federal agencies to help local relief efforts.
By February 21, power was gradually restored, but drinking water shortages still affected nearly half of Texas's population. To save water, some residents even boil ice and snow as drinking water.
According to CNN (local time) February 20 report, the city of Austin, Texas, has only 50.43 million gallons of water in storage, and the system needs at least 100 million gallons of water to keep it running. In total, Austin Water lost 325 million gallons of water due to the winter storm that broke pipes for several customers.
More than 15.1 million people in the state are at risk of water disruptions as extreme cold temperatures have damaged more than 1,300 public water systems, the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality said Saturday. About 156,000 people are without water at all, Executive Director Toby Baker said Saturday.
The mayor of Houston, Texas, said on Sunday morning that the fire department had received 4900 reports of burst water mains throughout the city, adding that there may be more than the reported burst water mains. The city distributes more than a million bottles of water to people to ease the drinking water shortage.
Local water companies currently handle water supplies to homes and businesses in the United States, such as the Austin Water Utility, scattered across states. This sudden extreme weather event exposed the current water supply system’s problems in anti-pressure capacity, emergency response capacity, rapid response, practical strain capacity and other aspects. Facts have proved that a tripartite government-enterprise cooperation model involving local governments, large technology suppliers and the local small and medium-sized enterprises （SMEs）should be appropriately introduced in public services. Here, some of China's experiences may help.
The Yingtan City Water Project
China is a country affected by severe droughts and water shortages. According to the data released by the Global Water and Agriculture Information System of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the annual per capita water resource in China was 2,062 cubic meters in 2014: only one-fourth of the average world level. This makes China one of the poorest in terms of per capita water resources in the world.
Limited availability of freshwater resources and water waste, pollution, climate warming and decreasing precipitation have exacerbated the water scarcity crisis . One Chinese city affected by water insecurity is Yingtan (鹰潭), a city located in Jiangxi Province (江西省) of Southeastern China with over 1 million people. As in many cities in China, tap water is not safe to drink. Both households and businesses have to install water purifiers for clean water.
In developed countries, the direct drinking water system has been used for decades. However, they have struggled to catch on in China because local governments and enterprises typically lack the expertise and financial capacity to equip cities with “smart” facilities--facilities that use innovative, cutting-edge technologies. Nevertheless, this was resolved when Huawei, a large technology supplier with smart city technology expertise, joined forces with Yingtan city officials.
The smart water project leverages cross-sector expertise and funding to create “smart” water facilities, including water purifiers and meters, which allow residents to check the water quality using an app on their smartphones. Another core client base is companies, which can also subscribe to these water management services to ensure that they have access to clean water, resulting in considerable cost savings and reduced waste of water resources.
“We use applications as a starting point and encourage companies to upgrade through trial and error.” Pan Weihua, Yingtan City Information Office Deputy Director, said in an interview with Xinhua News Agency reporters. As the director said, the Yingtan smart water meter project results from continuous trial and error by technology companies with the local government’s support. This partnership fits into China’s changing approach towards innovation, which features the central government’s reduced management role and increased latitude for private enterprises’ decision-making.
So far, Yingtan has become the first city in China to apply smart water meters citywide, with 130,000 smart water meters installed in the city. These devices can measure real-time water consumption and alert for real-time water leakage. According to the Yingtan Water Supply Company’s data, the pipe network’s leakage rate has dropped from 20 percent to 12 percent, saving 2.4 million tons of water annually.
Improvement in Urban Water Supply Solutions
The platform deployed in Yingtan is, generally speaking, an Internet of Things (IoT) project with multiple innovative public services. The smart water meter, which requires intelligent sensing devices and a processing center to connect the meter to the Internet or 5G, is one key example of innovation. This new network collects a wealth of data, which can be harnessed for significant data advancements, another Strategic Emerging Industry (SEI). The Yingtan City government took the lead in the smart city project’s top-level design, with mobile network carriers providing the technology infrastructure and the local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) providing the specific types of terminal services, including transportation, assembly and installation.
As the IoT infrastructure builder, Huawei has made a breakthrough in the government and SMEs’ problem regarding lack of capital and innovative technology. Huawei provided a series of innovative solutions from chip to platform for further partnerships between the government and local SMEs.
As the client of IoT infrastructure services, Yingtan City indeed was the right choice for Huawei. As it turns out, Yingtan, a small inland city, is more likely to promote “city-level” applications because of its small size. In 2017, Yingtan became a pilot demonstration city for the achievement transfer and transformation of the national primary science and technology project of “New Generation Broadband Wireless Mobile Communication Network,” ushering in a historical opportunity period.
As the next step, the Yingtan Municipal Government plans to establish a cooperative alliance with Huawei and sign a series of Internet of Things usage agreements with Huawei to expand the Internet of Things’ coverage (IoT) and ensure the implementation of subsequent technological innovation. Simultaneously, the Yingtan government should continue building an open and prosperous IoT ecosystem and introducing more local SMEs to continue innovating public services on Huawei’s platform.
Promotion of Smart City & IoT Projects
The IoT ecosystem can be introduced and applied to other regions that need to improve local public service capacity, such as Texas, based on formal and informal public-private partnerships.
The Yingtan Internet of Things construction project demonstrates the significant role of technology enterprises in infrastructure construction. Therefore, the local government should create an environment conducive to technology enterprises’ development, such as introducing preferential policies to invite leading technology enterprises and encourage local enterprises’ innovation.
Specifically, local governments can sign strategic cooperation framework agreements with enterprises to further deepen the cooperation between them and promote smart cities’ construction. The Municipalities, such as Austin’s city, could sign long-term agreements with technology companies and mobile network carriers to provide a secure infrastructure for the local IoT ecosystem. Governments at all levels can implement universal tax reduction policies, such as suspending or exempting the value-added tax (VAT) of enterprises below a specific size and reducing tax levels for local small and micro-enterprises. This will enable local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to increase their spending on R&D. This, in turn, strengthens their confidence in the potential for future development and innovation, enhancing the market’s overall vitality.
The local government should take the initiative to cooperate with local SMEs to launch a variety of innovative service products based on IoT through public-private partnerships. As an innovative financing model, tripartite public-private partnerships involving local governments, large technology suppliers and local SMEs have great potential to improve the quality of public services, stimulating innovation and reducing costs.
Haoyang Li is a first-year MPP student from China.