Denver International Airport officials confirmed what some hawk-eyed H2O fans had already noticed — the filter status indicators on more than 100 water bottle-filling stations across DIA don’t work.
That’s because DIA shut off the indicators about a year ago. The airport’s senior maintenance official said this week that the decision was made because the indicators were throwing off maintenance cycles.
The lights went dark about a year ago, meaning passengers had no more green, amber or red indicators to inform their drinking decisions.
But Kyle Lester, DIA’s senior vice president for maintenance, says the airport has a plan to make sure it stays on top of filter changes on the filling stations — and to ensure users can check on their status. Filters are still being changed regularly, he said, and new sensors and software now being installed will help keep them on track.
In the meantime, the dark indicator lights have prompted concerns among some travelers, including Ted Van Anne.
The retiree and frequent flyer estimates he has visited 50 airports in the last five years. One of his most frequent stops is Denver, where he flies in before driving to visit his mother in Nebraska.
“DIA is the only airport where they consistently don’t have their lights on,” Van Anne, 63, told The Denver Post. “I have walked all over the airport looking for a green light at DIA and end up never finding one.”
Lester said the new tech-heavy system will enable DIA to more closely monitor the lifespans of the facility’s water filters The upgrades, now in progress, are intended to give hydration-minded travelers more reliable information and streamline the airport’s replacement schedule at 114 filling stations spread across the airport’s terminal and three concourses.
“I am pretty excited about the transparency of it and the efficiency it will create for us,” Lester said.
The rationale for the big shutoff was that the indicator lights no longer matched up with the airport’s preventative maintenance schedule for filter replacements, he said.
“There were some glitches in there. I would hear that from technicians: ‘It doesn’t need replacement. We just replaced it,’ ” Lester said. “But it was more that we were responding to public comments because we were off cycle essentially.”
Once installed, the sensors should cut down on service calls that pull technicians away from other work.
Enter RTI Aquantix. The tech company produced the gear and software that tracks how many gallons of water have passed through a filter. The software then zeroes in on an anticipated filter replacement date. Lester said DIA has paid about $6,900 for the system.
As of Wednesday, maintenance staffers had installed sensors at 31 filling stations, Lester said. By the end of the month, Lester is hopeful installation will be completed airportwide.
Signs bearing QR codes are being added at updated stations. Users can scan a code with their phone’s camera to see real-time information about the lifespan of the filters, which are good for up to 3,000 gallons each, Lester said.
The scale of the airport’s filter replacement needs is the result of Lester and his team replacing drinking fountains with more filling stations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and shifting consumer demands.
“This is important to us,” he said. “Maybe we were caught off guard by the workload of changing out filters. Once we realized that’s not working for us, we quickly pivoted to go find a better solution.”
Van Anne is encouraged, but he’s skeptical of the new system.
“The light seems so much easier, and almost every other airport uses the light,” he said. “I guess we’ll see how it works.”
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