washington — flint, michigan, residents, activists, and artists gathered in washington, d.c., on april 25 for an art showcase to call national attention to the continued effects of the city’s water crisis. the event marked four years after a state-appointed official made the ill-fated decision to switch flint’s water source to the flint river, which resulted in disastrous lead contamination.

“the city still doesn’t have water that the people can trust,” said rep. dan kildee, d-mich. “this is an anniversary that we don’t want to celebrate.”

melissa mays, a flint resident and mother of three sons, came to the nation’s capital to make sure lawmakers don’t forget the city’s plight. she said the city should serve as a warning to the rest of the country: “we know it’s not just us. we know (the contamination) is everywhere.”

earlier this month, michigan gov. rick snyder declared flint’s tap water safe to drink and officially ended the free bottled water service to local residents. while these actions may signal the city’s progress, residents remain skeptical of an infrastructure that still relies on contaminated water lines that won’t be fully replaced until 2020.

residents also face continually high water bills and health complications.

the fundred dollar bill project, an organization that draws attention to the danger of childhood lead poisoning, featured artwork from students across the country in the cannon house office building on wednesday.

the artwork is a collection of student drawings on fake dollar bills, which are supposed to serve as a reminder of the child’s value, according to founder mel chin.

flint resident ja’bari shepherd, 8, displayed his own artwork at the exhibit. his art included the drawing of a $300 bill that says, “people[’s] lives matter.”

shepherd said he wants the effects of the contamination to stop interfering with his friends’ lives “so that we can grow up and live a normal childhood like everyone else.” 

rep. kildee acknowledged there’s an irony in the project’s art considering that flint residents could use real money to help ease their mounting, costly problems.

“we know how to overcome these problems and it’s going to take resources,” he said. “the fundred project is a depiction of this problem… (but) we need the real thing.”

in fact, water conveyance — the transportation of water — is one of the largest energy consumers, accounting for about 8% of the entire country’s energy usage. and it turns out that we are conveying a lot more water than we need.

according to mark kovscek, founder and ceo of conservation labs, most of the infrastructure supporting water transportation is more than 50 years old, and faulty.

“most of our infrastructure was built in 1970 or earlier and needs to be replaced or repaired,” he said. “that cost in the next 10 plus years will be about 4.7 trillion dollars.”

water leaks generally account for about 15% of your monthly water bill. kovscek’s newest product, h2know, helps find those leaks to fix them. h2know is a smart water meter that connects to an app on your mobile device and saves you about $250 annually in water bills.

how h2know works

you can install h2know in less than 10 minutes to your own main pipeline, where the device takes live readings, thousands of measurements per second, of the pipe’s water flow.

every water-using device: washing machines, faucets, toilets, and even leaks, have a unique water signature, meaning that the rate of water flowing through the main pipeline changes according to which device is being used, and through advanced data analytics and machine learning algorithms, these measurements are converted into useful information for homeowners. this data will tell you exactly which device is using water and when, and also identify leaks as they happen. the real-time response is important, according to kovscek, because otherwise homeowners tend to ignore problems like these.

the example kovscek gives is of a homeowner with a leaky toilet. the homeowner notices a leak from the toilet’s connecting pipe after a few days, but puts a container under it and decides to take care of it later. after three consecutive months of a water bill $30 higher than usual, she finally calls a plumber. by that time she already has lost $90, plus the cost of the plumber.

an h2know device would have notified the homeowner as soon as the leak started and also offered her the contact information for a local plumber, and diy instructions on how to stop the leak.

h2know encourages the behavior of taking care of problems as they happen, resulting in less water loss and money down the drain.

according to kovscek, the app “casually reminds folks that there is this broader issue that’s out there of conservation.”

the app part of h2know aims to “gamify conservation,” kovscek says. it aims to compare a homeowner’s water usage to an average, or to a household with a same number of people living in it. this makes it a competition to conserve water. in other words, it provides incentive for people to begin changing their water use habits. the app also provides suggestions for ways to cut back on water usage.

kovscek’s conservation labs recently won one of the eureka parks climate change innovator awards at the consumer electronics show in las vegas — the first year they’ve given this environmental award — for its h2know, and the company has an indiegogo campaign running in order to bring their product to market.

h2know market projections 

according to kovscek, hexa research estimates the smart water meter market space to be about $2 billion. his own estimations came in at about $1.5 billion, although this market analysis was made before the smart water meter existed at all. kovscek explains that this projection is driven primarily by four factors:

the first is homeowners’ adoption of connected smart home devices. markets and markets estimates the smart-home industry will be worth $137.91 billion by 2023.

the second factor is increasing water rates. circle of blue estimates that in the past five years, water rates have increased by 40% in 30 major u.s. cities. kovscek says that his own bill is projected to rise 17% in the next year. these rising rates are due to old infrastructure being used to transport water, an estimated $4.7 trillion job for repairs and replacements that citizens are seeing in the form of rising water rates and taxes.

the third market-driving factor is climate change. citizens in california were mandated to reduce their water consumption by 20% during the most recent drought, a feat determined by habit and identifying leaks, both things which h2know addresses. similarly, extreme weather events and temperatures cause pipes to freeze and unfreeze at unprecedented rates, causing decaying pipes and water damage.

the fourth factor is the increasing public awareness of sustainability and environmental issues. people want to buy the most sustainable product and are becoming more conscious of consumer responsibility and dollar voting. all of these factors are driving a $2 billion product market, fit for h2know.

what sets h2know apart from its competitors is its lower price point — and its potential for investment returns for the homeowner. the appliance and app cost less than $100, and could save the homeowner as much as $250 a year. kovscek also estimates his product has a shelf life of 10-plus years, so customers don’t have to spend money replacing or repairing the device on a routine basis.

kovscek said h2know is able to operate at such an affordable price due to the research and care that the team at conservation labs put into it. kovscek himself has an impressive background in data analytics, with a degree in mathematics from carnegie mellon university, and having worked for a long time solving big problems using advanced mathematic techniques. he is a numbers guy at heart, and sees what he does as “fun exercises in data science” that he is passionate and excited about, rather than as work.

with his expertise, conservation labs has invested the time and money into machine learning in order to sift through the messy and complicated data that their low cost sensor produces. kovscek said this is different from other products on the market that use expensive sensors, which need to be installed by a plumber, and are invasive to the water infrastructure design. while some of these other products are fitted with an application that is capable of directly turning off the water supply as soon as a leak is detected, these technologies are entering the market at about $500. products at this price might save water, but probably won’t save much money. 

the future of water conservation

in the future, kovscek hopes to produce a product that works in tandem with h2know and will directly turn off the water supply when a leak is detected. he hopes to customize one of these products that already is on the market to work compatibly with h2know and provide homeowners with this additional feature.

while the primary focus of conservation labs right now is on homeowners, and shipping out the first 1,000 h2know devices by the end of the year, kovscek sees the possibility of bringing h2know to commercial spaces in the future.

there is a “need and market with commercial places too,” he says, but “it is hard to scale with wi-fi being the primary communication protocol.” it would be hard to have a wi-fi network responsible for reaching the area included within a city’s limits, not to mention the problems associated with wi-fi security, passwords, and privacy protection.

in order to bring h2know to universities, towns, and cities, they would need to use a different communication platform. however, it is doable, and would help to identify leaks and trouble spots in city infrastructures that need replacement, ultimately saving tax dollars and increasing water rates.

conservation labs is still looking for partners with similar values with whom they can go to market, and is looking forward to having many of those conversations this year.

now a giant machine, akin to a mechanical earthworm, denominated lady bird, burrowed deep under the city, creating a tunnel. this tunnel will serve to redirect sewage overflows, keeping the waste out of the city’s rivers on the occasions when the archaic sewage system becomes overwhelmed — a problem that has contributed to 3 billion gallons of raw sewage deposited into the anacostia and potomac annually.

this tunnel project is part of a larger commitment, $2.6 billion that d.c., along with the environmental protection agency, has invested in a the clean rivers project, a 20 year rivers cleanup initiative.

one report released by dc appleseed, a d.c.-based organization focused on solving problems affecting the district and its residents, stated that the anacostia river is one of the dirtiest in the country, practically unswimmable and for all safe purposes unfishable. yet, the rivers are still a hub for d.c. life. people boat and fish in both of the city’s rivers, and the banks house parks, stadiums and other centers of activity.

currently, the district’s sewer system dates back to the 1800s. it uses a combined approach, with one set of pipes for both sewage and stormwater. this means that with any storm that accumulates more than a quarter inch of rainfall, sewage flows into the rivers through 60 main overflow sites.

to give you an example of the extent of the problem, the highest rate of overflow for the last quarter of 2015 was the northeast boundary swirl effluent combined sewer overflow. there were 10 overflows in the quarter, which equaled spillage of 128.66 million gallons of sewage and flowed for just under 80 hours. to put it in perspective, this is enough sewage to fill just under 195 olympic swimming pools.

it’s estimated the new tunnel will cut those sewage overflows by 96%.

the machine used to create this tunnel is known as a tunnel boring machine, and consists of a cutterhead, scrapers, a giant screw and a conveyor belt. lady bird is 442 feet long (more than a football field in length, according to dc water), weighs 1,325 tons, and can move at a speed of 4 inches per minute.

to travel forward it braces itself against the sides of the concrete tunnel behind it and uses hydraulic jacks to propel itself forward as the cutterhead slowly rotates. the earth is loosened and mixed with a soapy, conditioning substance. it is then sucked into a giant screw which turns, carrying the muck to a conveyor belt, where it travels out of the tunnel to be disposed of at a dumping site.

after each push a new section of the tunnel is put up by workers, who make use of a mechanical arm to fit the pre-made sections into place. as the next shove occurs, grout is injected between the new tunnel and the outside dirt. workers lay down rails so the next section of tunnels can arrive and the cycle continues.

while lady bird has completed her section of the tunnel, as has a machine named lucy diggs slowe, named for one of the founders and first president of alpha kappa alpha sorority, and later an administrator at howard university. two other machines will continue to work. the third tunnel boring machine, named nannie after nannie helen burroughs, a civil rights activist who was very prominent in d.c. and helped provide education for african-american girls. nannie is digging the portion of the tunnel near rfk stadium, which will connect to the tunnel that lady bird is working on. the fourth machine, a micro tunnel boring machine simply called abigail, will connect lucy’s tunnel to existing sewers.

these tunnels, when combined with urban sustainability and green infrastructure projects such as distributing free rain barrels to residents and replacing asphalt with a more porous pavement, green roofs and rain gardens. all of these, and other efforts combine in the $2.6 billion, 20-year clean rivers project. in a decade, at the end of this initiative, district residents can expect to once again see rivers that are swimmable, fishable and compliant to the epa regulations.