“The most beautiful thing about water is that it is continuous,” says Alison Adams, P.E., Tampa Bay Water’s chief technical officer and water resources engineer. “It starts as rain and appears as river flow and as sweat on my brow, which means it’s going back into the atmosphere.”
The wholesale public water utility that she works with develops water supplies for three
counties and three cities in west central Florida. It previously relied solely on groundwater, resulting in environmental destruction as the system is close to the surface and to rivers, streams, lakes, and wetlands, with immediate and long-lasting pumping impacts.
Population growth, state regulations, and water wars forced a shift to alternative water supplies, including groundwater from a three-county area, surface water from two local rivers, and desalinized water from Tampa Bay, blended with surface and groundwater.
The desalination plant presented challenges through ineffective membrane technology, low water demand, high-energy costs, and the original engineering firm going bankrupt. The plant is operational, providing up to 3% of the demand, with expectations for increased contributions in the next 15 years.
Water demand risk has now shifted to rainfall. 60% of the rain falls during four summer months and is stored in a 15.5-billion-gallon reservoir; the remainder of the year is dry. River flow patterns follow the same cycle. When water drops below minimum flow limits, it cannot be withdrawn for drinking water.
Adams and other Tampa Bay Water team members study daily and long-term weather patterns to ascertain water supply source impact. Today, “there is a lot of evidence that 15 years later, after we reduced groundwater pumpage, that many lakes and wetlands returned to a pre-pumping hydrologic pattern, where they now mimic highs and lows based upon rainfall changes,” says Adams.
What She Does Day to Day
Adams’ science and technology division responsibilities entail overseeing information technology, regulatory compliance activity, and permit-required monitoring, reporting, and analysis. She oversees the drinking water lab’s raw and finished water analyses. Another responsibility: long-term planning and operation and decision support planning, using data analysis to make day-to-day and long-term decisions for optimal system operation, and water supply identification to meet current and future demands. The technology group sets up operational controls, such as instrumentation and SCADA, so water plant treatment operators can effectively and efficiently monitor regional water supplies and distribution.
What Led Her Into This Line of Work
Adams was a University of Florida pre-med student majoring in zoology. Her interest in natural systems dates back to her farming childhood. Halfway through undergraduate studies, she enrolled in the US Army to get the GI Bill to finish school. She served as a public and environmental health specialist, inspecting drinking water facilities and engaging in a variety of environmental science tasks, which sparked a career interest. After three years, she returned to the University of Florida—focusing on water resource engineering—to earn a B.S. in environmental engineering. Adams earned an M.S. in engineering management from the University of South Florida, “looking more at the human side as well as the math side of matters,” she notes.
She worked at a now-defunct land development company in Miami and then the Southwest Florida Water Management District before joining Tampa Bay Water, which she left for five years to earn a Ph.D. in civil engineering and water resources and management from Colorado State University—focusing on formation and resolution of regional water conflicts and learning about social decision-making.
What She Likes Best About Her Work
Adams enjoys linking long-term and operational planning, “looking at the decisions you make today, and how they influence the decisions that need to be made in the future, and how decisions made in the future impact what occurs today. It’s a cycle of the operational aspects leading to long-term planning. Those results create different and new operational challenges.”
Her Biggest Challenge
Managing a diverse group of people is her greatest challenge. She juggles her myriad responsibilities through long-distance running, including 100-mile marathons. “Part of my ability to stay focused and on task at the office is that opportunity to get outside and physically exert my body, so my mind can relax,” she says.
