Water efficiency as a service doesn’t just lower your water bill. As one manufacturer in the Pacific Northwest learned, getting better insight into how your facility uses water can be crucial for reducing steep fines.
Investing in water-saving equipment and training your employees to conduct proper maintenance is important. But without a system to detect leaks and abnormal usage, all that equipment could be wasting water efficiently, and your employees wouldn’t notice until your water bill arrives.
Sewer fines were costly— how could we reduce or eliminate them?
Our client relied on large-scale water usage for their daily manufacturing operations. Every month, they were running up more than $49,000 in fines for exceeding their monthly sewer limits. They knew significant contamination was occurring somewhere in their facility, but they had multiple water-intensive processes running simultaneously, and it was hard to pinpoint the source of the problem.
Identifying the source of the problem
Partnering with Apana changed that. Our water efficiency as a service platform gave them a clear overview of how their facility used water. This provided their team the ability to see their water consumption, broken down by major processes and location.
Given the scale of the problem, it was easier to narrow down the possible sources. They could also zoom in on specific areas like their cooling tower to see how usage fluctuated throughout each day and over the course of the work week, including a breakdown of makeup water and blowdown over time. Without anyone setting foot in their cooling tower, they could evaluate the makeup-to-blowdown ratio and determine if that was the problem.
Apana didn’t just give them data. We helped them turn that data into actionable insights. Our platform helped them see that the source of the problem was most likely an upstream process, then provided custom step-by-step instructions to assess the problem and revise their procedures.
Water and sewer expenses reduced by $49,000 every month
After making key changes, the next billing cycle showed that they’d found (and corrected) the problem: eliminating the sewer overage and saving over $49,000 in sewer fines.
Additionally, our intuitive analytics allowed them to find new ways to save water in their regular operations. And since our platform has enough data to understand what their regular water usage looks like, we can send them automatic alerts when water waste occurs—so the next time there’s a problem, they don’t have to wait until their water bill arrives to identify and correct it.
Invest in water efficiency as a service
When companies think about saving water, they often focus on the base cost of the water they use. But as you can see, the true cost of water goes beyond what you see on your water bill. When your facility wastes water, a contamination issue can become a much bigger problem and result in increased sewer fees and water treatment costs. (Not to mention wasted gas and electricity.)
Focusing on water management can help mitigate a lot of the risks to your facility, but there are always going to be times your employees aren’t monitoring your water use and parts of your water infrastructure that they can’t see. That’s why facilities with large water-related operations turn to Apana for 24/7 monitoring, instant alerts, and actionable insights.