Fortnightly Top Innovators 2018
Ben Stanford is Senior Director – Water Intelligence, Technology and Innovation, American Water.
Steve Mitnick is Editor-in-Chief of Public Utilities Fortnightly and President of Lines Up, Inc.
PUF: You have an interesting job.
Ben Stanford: I'm in a unique position where I lead a team that is responsible for coming up with solutions that impact everyday operations, and efficiency, at our water and wastewater utilities.
My team gets to delve into concerns about new contaminants. We get to help operators figure out how to do their jobs better. We look to develop innovations that will make our systems safer by addressing emerging contaminants. It's fun, exciting, and dynamic.
PUF: You're using state-of-the-art labs.
Ben Stanford: We have two high-tech labs, one in Illinois, outside of St. Louis, and one in New Jersey, near our Camden headquarters.
With those two teams, we have state-of-the-art instrumentation that can find new and emerging contaminants at very low concentrations, sub-part-per-trillion levels, and help us figure out how we're going to respond to health advisories.