WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 19, 2024--
The City of Hot Springs took decisive steps to reduce non-revenue water loss by nearly 50 percent using advanced digital solutions from Xylem (NYSE: XYL).
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Hot Springs’ 143-year-old water system experienced frequent leaks due to aging infrastructure and the rocky terrain. The city modernized their system and reduced non-revenue water loss nearly in half.
"Our first wise investment was the deployment of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), which allowed us to monitor the system more efficiently with Sensus iPERL ® meters and the FlexNet ® communication network,” said Monty Ledbetter, director of utilities at the City of Hot Springs.
The technology upgrade enabled remotely managed water monitoring and real-time leak detection. It helped Hot Springs identify a sudden water loss of four million gallons. The team quickly located the water line and repaired a broken air release valve.
The utility continued its digital transformation by adding virtual district metering areas with Xylem Vue. The integrated software and analytics platform allowed the city to pinpoint high water loss areas by creating smaller, more manageable zones within the network.
Daily monitoring of the analytics dashboard has been key. When the system flagged unaccounted-for water in one zone, utility workers investigated, and after three inspections, discovered a fire hydrant leaking 2,000 gallons per hour into a creek.
"With Xylem Vue, we're not just reacting to leaks. We're proactively detecting them before they become major issues,” said Ledbetter. “This ability to pinpoint problem areas in real time allows for substantial cost and time savings.”
The city strategically plans to expand the virtual zones and aims to bring non-revenue water down to 10 percent. To learn more about Hot Springs’ digital transformation, read the case study.
About Xylem
Xylem (XYL) is a Fortune 500 global water solutions company that empowers customers and communities to build a more water-secure world. Our 23,000 diverse employees delivered combined pro forma revenue of $8.1 billion in 2023, optimizing water and resource management with innovation and expertise. Join us at www.xylem.com and “Let’s Solve Water.”
The City of Hot Springs Utilities in Arkansas credits advanced metering infrastructure and leak detection for reducing water loss and strives to continuously improve with virtual district metering areas. (Photo: Business Wire)
A U.S. envoy has arrived in Beirut to meet with Lebanese officials about a possible cease-fire in the Israel-Hezbollah war.
Amos Hochstein, a senior advisor to United States President Joe Biden, arrived Tuesday, a day after Hezbollah reportedly gave a positive response to a U.S. draft proposal to end the war, which has been ongoing for more than 13 months.
The U.S. has been working on a proposal to end hostilities that would remove Israeli ground forces from Lebanon and push Hezbollah forces away from the Israeli border. More Lebanese troops and U.N. peacekeepers would be sent to the buffer zone in southern Lebanon as part of the deal.
Hochstein’s main meeting on Tuesday will be with Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally who is mediating for the militants.
Hochstein’s arrival came hours after an Israeli strike in central Beirut killed five people and wounded others. It was the third Israeli strike in the heart of Beirut in two days.
Since late September, Israel has dramatically escalated its bombardment of Lebanon, vowing to severely weaken Hezbollah and end its rocket barrages into Israel.
Hezbollah began firing rockets, and drawing Israeli retaliation, on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel ignited the war in Gaza. Both groups are supported by Iran. The fighting has left more than 3,500 dead in Lebanon and almost 15,000 wounded, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. It also has displaced nearly 1.2 million, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population.
On the Israeli side, 87 soldiers and 50 civilians, including some foreign laborers who work in agriculture, have been killed by attacks involving rockets, drones and missiles.
Here's the Latest:
BEIRUT — Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson says Hamas leaders have left Doha but denied reports that Qatar has ordered a permanent closure of the Palestinian militant group’s political office or expulsion of its previously Doha-based leadership.
Qatar, which had served as a mediator in indirect cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas for a cease-fire and hostage exchange deal, has suspended its efforts after growing frustration with the lack of progress on a cease-fire deal for Gaza.
The Qatari spokesman, Majed bin Mohammed al-Ansari, told reporters on Tuesday that "if there is decision to close the office permanently you will hear this news from this platform or in an official statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
“The leaders of Hamas that are in the negotiating team are now not in Doha and as you know, they move between the different capitals,” he said. ”...The office in Doha was created for the purpose of the mediation process — obviously when there is no mediation process, the office itself doesn’t have any function.”
Al-Ansari did not say where the Hamas leaders went nor did he rule out that Doha might return to its mediating role.
“The suspension of negotiation efforts does not in any way mean that there is a Qatari position to withdraw from de-escalation efforts or that there is a change in the position of the State of Qatar on the need to end this war,” he said.
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military has facilitated the delivery of blood units to a hospital in isolated northern Gaza.
Israel has imposed a tight siege on the northernmost part of the territory since launching an offensive there in early October. Aid groups say very little humanitarian assistance has been allowed in and have warned of famine.
The military agency in charge of transferring aid to Gaza, COGAT, said it had sent 1,000 units of blood through a northern crossing on Monday. The U.N.’s health cluster said the blood shipment was delivered to Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled the northernmost reaches of the strip since the offensive began, and hospitals there have struggled to function.
JERUSALEM — Israeli forces have killed three militants in the occupied West Bank.
The military says they were killed during an ongoing raid in Jenin, in the north of the occupied territory, which has been a flashpoint for Israeli-Palestinian violence in recent years, even before the war in Gaza. Hamas identified all three of those killed as its fighters.
Since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack triggered the war in Gaza, Israeli fire has killed at least 784 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 167 children, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Health Ministry.
Most appear to have been militants killed during Israeli raids, but the dead also include people killed during violent protests as well as civilian bystanders.
There has also been a rise in stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks against Israelis.
Israel seized the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want it to form the main part of their future state.
JERUSALEM — Israel has issued a veiled threat to strike Iraq in response to recent attacks by Iran-backed militant groups based there.
In a letter to the United Nations Security Council posted on X, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said his country has the right to “take all necessary measures to protect itself and its citizens against the ongoing acts of hostilities by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.”
Militants in Iraq have launched several rocket and drone attacks against both Israel and U.S. forces since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack triggered the war in Gaza.
An Oct. 3 drone attack launched from Iraq on an army base in northern Israel killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded 24, Saar said.
Israel is believed to have struck militants in Iraq in 2019, but it has not acknowledged any such strikes since the start of the war in Gaza. Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Iran-backed militants in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
In his letter, Saar called on the U.N. to take “immediate action” to address the situation.
BEIRUT — A U.S. envoy to the Middle East says he had “very constructive talks” in Lebanon and that reaching an agreement to end the Israel-Hezbollah war “is now within our grasp.”
“Specifically today, we have continued to significantly narrow the gaps. The meeting was very constructive and very helpful,” Amos Hochstein, the U.S. envoy to Lebanon and Israel, told reporters Tuesday.
He spoke after a two-hour meeting with Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, an ally of Hezbollah who is mediating on the group’s behalf.
The emerging agreement would apparently restore a U.N. buffer zone patrolled by international peacekeepers and Lebanese troops in southern Lebanon, with Israel withdrawing its ground forces and Hezbollah militants pulling back to the north.
Hochstein, who has been shuttling back and forth for several months, said he came back to the region because “we have a real opportunity to bring this conflict to an end.”
“I’m here in Beirut to facilitate that decision-making, but it’s ultimately the decisions of the parties to reach a conclusion to this conflict,” he said. “It is now within our grasp.”
Hochstein was scheduled to meet Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and other officials.
"I am committed to do everything I can to work with the government here in Lebanon and in Israel to bring this conflict to a close,” he said.
GENEVA — The U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, under pressure from an Israeli military campaign against militant group Hezbollah in its area of operations, says Argentina has asked three of its officers in the contingent to return home, while all other contributing countries are maintaining their commitments.
Spokesman Andrea Tenenti of UNIFIL said its “operational capabilities have not changed” after the move by Argentina, and U.N. forces have not moved from their positions – despite Israeli Defense Forces asking them to move from positions near the “blue line” along the Lebanon-Israel border about a month ago.
“The posture of our more than 10,000 peacekeepers from nearly 50 countries remain unchanged,” he told a U.N. briefing in Geneva by video conference from Beirut. The UNIFIL forces have not left the 50 positions across their area of operations, aiming to monitor and report on this situation since Israeli forces began their military campaign in Lebanon in September.
He said UNIFIL has limited means to monitor the situation amid the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. While Israeli forces have at times moved deeper into Lebanon, it’s not “permanently,” and the level of destruction in UNIFIL zones was “huge” and “shocking.”
Separately, UNICEF spokesman James Elder told the U.N. briefing that more than 200 children have been killed in Lebanon in less than the last two months, saying “their deaths are being met with inertia from those able to stop this violence.”
“It’s become a silent normalization of horror,” Elder said.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Tuesday marks the one-year anniversary of Yemen’s Houthi rebels beginning their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea corridor.
On Nov. 19, 2023, the Houthis seized the car carrier Galaxy Leader in a helicopter-borne attack in the Red Sea. The ship and its 25 crew remain held until today, something the United Nations Security Council noted in a statement calling on the rebels to release the ship and its crew.
The Houthis have attacked over 90 commercial vessels in the time since. They sank two vessels in the campaign, which also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a U.S.-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have included Western military vessels as well.
People inspect a destroyed building hit on Monday evening by an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
A man passes in front of a destroyed building hit on Monday evening by an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
A destroyed building hit on Monday evening by an Israeli airstrike is seen in central Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
A man clears broken glass from his damaged shop near a building hit on Monday evening by an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
A destroyed building hit on Monday evening by an Israeli airstrike is seen in central Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People inspect a destroyed building that was hit on Monday evening by an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
A destroyed building hit on Monday evening by an Israeli airstrike is seen in central Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Women react as they pass through debris of a building hit on Monday evening by an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People stand next to a destroyed building hit on Monday evening by an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
A destroyed building hit on Monday evening by an Israeli airstrike is seen in central Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
