Utilities Are Careful for a Reason. New York Built a Way In.

New York City's DEP moves 1 billion gallons of drinking water a day to more than 9.6 million people, and about 95 percent of it arrives by gravity from 19 upstate reservoirs. The watersheds are protected well enough that federal rules let most of that water be delivered unfiltered. It is one of the largest gravity-fed municipal systems on earth, and it is aging. Anushree Sreedhar runs the Environmental Tech Lab at the Partnership Fund for New York City, a pilot program built with DEP that gives startups a real, structured way in. In three years the lab has partnered with 24 companies, helped two land commercial procurements, and has about five more underway. We get into why a careful utility is careful for good reasons, what the four-stage process actually looks like, who is on the hook when a pilot stalls, and the honest part: a successful pilot is not a purchase order. Applications for the fourth round are open now and close October 23. Apply: https://www.envirotechlab.nyc/apply 00:00 Intro 00:09 Who Anushree is 00:45 The Partnership and the Partnership Fund 05:38 The FinTech Innovation Lab precedent 10:45 What DEP actually runs 17:56 How New York's water actually moves 20:28 Three years, 24 proofs of concept 23:03 Bucket two: sensors and IoT 24:26 Bucket three: energy and resource recovery 25:46 How the program has changed 31:05 Do other utilities want this 37:15 The fire extinguisher patent 41:50 Why invent a fire extinguisher 43:57 Favorite piece of industrial design 45:27 Reading Recoding America 47:08 The new round, and what they are asking for 49:58 Thank you Environmental Tech Lab: https://www.envirotechlab.nyc Apply (closes October 23): https://www.envirotechlab.nyc/apply Partnership Fund for New York City: https://pfnyc.org/innovation-and-inve... Full write-up and transcript: https://www.liquidassets.cc/nyc-envir... Gryps: https://gryps.io Knaq: https://knaq.io Liquid Assets is sponsored by HASA. Premium water care since 1964.