Pauli Undesser delivered an inspiring presentation at TEDx Folsom this year.
In her talk “Smart Cities Can’t Afford Dumb Water,” Pauli makes a compelling case: many cities are upgrading their technologies, pushing toward sustainability and data-driven systems, yet their water infrastructure often remains stuck in the past.
We’re treating all municipal water as though it must meet drinking-quality standards, even when much of it is used for purposes that don’t require that level of purity. That mismatch is expensive, wasteful, and environmentally unsustainable. The problem is further compounded when regulators are then forced to establish a safe minimum standard that attempts to balance cost with protecting human health.
Dumb Water
“Dumb water” refers to the practice of treating all water to potable (drinkable) standards—even when much of the treated water ends up doing jobs that don’t demand drinking water level purity, such as:
- Flushing toilets
- Irrigating lawns or crops
- Cooling systems
- Industrial non-critical uses
This over-treatment means higher energy use, higher chemical use, more infrastructure stress, and higher cost—both capital and operational.
Pauli argues that smart cities must stop wasting by mismatching water quality to use-quality demands. Instead, systems should have differentiated treatment, intelligent reuse, and more decentralized flexibility built in.
Moving Forward
Pauli Undesser’s message is clear: as cities build smarter in terms of sensors, data, and connectivity, they must also modernize how they treat and use water. The “one-size-fits-all” model of treating everything as drinkable is no longer sustainable.
What must happen:
- Leadership & Vision: City governments, utilities, and regulators need to commit to seeing water as a flex resource—not just one single quality of water.
- Policy & Standards Overhaul: Allow reuse and non-potable infrastructure legally and safely while also encouraging decentralized treatment of municipally delivered water.
- Invest in Smart Infrastructure: Differentiated treatment pipelines, reuse systems, efficient technologies, monitoring & control all cost money, but they pay dividends in water security and human health.
- Educate & Involve People: To secure public trust, people need to understand why treated water is sometimes over-qualified, why reuse is safe, and how these systems help sustainability.
If we do this, smart cities won’t just be about smart lights, smart grids, or smart sensors—they’ll be smart water systems: efficient, resilient, sustainable. Given how essential water is, that’s one of the smartest infrastructure investments you can make.