Sara Myers is associate editor of iWWD. Myers can be reached at [email protected].
Industrial applications can be a multitude of things. From the time I’ve started writing for Industrial Water & Wastes Digest till now, what I thought was an example of industrial water and what in actuality is industrial water are two different things. When I think of the word “industrial”, what comes to mind is an image of big machinery such as a huge trailer or big pipe.
Recently, I found out that the industrial and the municipal sectors can overlap. According to recent preliminary Signet Study results for iWWD, there is a portion of this audience that works at municipal water or wastewater plants. We have often thought about industrial water and wastewater treatment as being on-site at an oil refinery, food processing plant, power plant or even a semiconductor manufacturer. But this study suggests to us that there are many of you who treat industrial water and wastewater coming into your facility through the sanitary sewer system.
This is a new angle that had not occurred to me and highlights how this industry overlaps our two magazines, Water & Wastes Digest and iWWD.
Often when I am writing a news story on our website, I notice that it will cover things in both municipal and industrial markets. For instance, in a recent news story, I wrote about how the U.S. EPA announced an agreement with Missouri Mining Investments LLC, to clean up the Madison County Mines Superfund site in Mississippi. The site is contaminated by lead and heavy metals at levels exceeding EPA screening level criteria, though the mining operations at the site ceased in the early 1960s. In another story, chemicals including ammonia and cyanide spilled onto the ground from an above-ground holding tank at Erie Coke Corp. and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has required the company to clean up the spill.
Both stories have connections to municipal and industrial sectors and therein lies the overlap. I wonder how we can target this kind of overlap with more content that could be relevant to you as a reader. How and where do you find this overlap? Are there certain technologies or applications you think we need to better facilitate articles about throughout the year? Let us know by sending an email to [email protected]. And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, where you also can reach me directly.
