
Rather than committing to clean out sewer lines whether it’s needed or not, the Little Rock (Arkansas) Water Reclamation Authority is using acoustic monitoring to identify pipelines that need attention. Here a worker uses the Sewer Line Rapid Assessment Tool, or SL-RAT, by InfoSense on an inspection.
Twenty years ago, Little Rock, Arkansas, had a significant overflow problem — significant enough to trigger a lawsuit by the Sierra Club and an Administrative Order on Consent. Back then, there could be as many as 350 overflows during a rain event, some lasting for hours.
Today, the Little Rock Water Reclamation Authority has lowered that number to just 50 combined sewer overflows during a two-year rain event, and it intends to eliminate 30 more by the end of this year. It’s...