DRINKING WATER
Why Multi‑Commodity Utilities Need Smart Meter Data Management
Breaking down data silos allows multi-commodity utilities to improve operational efficiency and infrastructure visibility. By managing water and electric data on a shared platform, providers can detect leaks faster and support long-term conservation goals.
DRINKING WATER CASE STUDIES AND WHITE PAPERS
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User-Friendly Cartridge Technology Simplifies Water Treatment Operations For The Small System Market
Applied Cartridge Systems were designed to be a simple to operate potable water treatment solution – emerging from the well-known ISOLUX Arsenic removal systems.
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Using AI To Reduce Water Loss And Enhance Pipe Reliability
AI models give utility managers actionable insights into the health of their pipe networks, enabling a shift from reactive to predictive maintenance.
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How To Gain An Affordable Grasp Of Water's Digital Transformation
Water industry press naturally covers the broadest and brightest promises of the digital revolution. Unfortunately, that big-picture view can often intimidate or mislead small to -midsize utilities that interpret it as demanding a large investment in order to reap the benefits. Here are some insights into how utilities of any size can affordably harness the value of timely digital data from their distribution systems.
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Important Considerations For Pipe Repair And Replacement
While you may not know exactly when and where the next pipe will burst, planning for breaks is possible, and the effort expended on this is a direct benefit to optimizing replacement projects.
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Connecting Every Drop: Are Your Water-Loss And Conservation Efforts Up To Date?
A new, peer-reviewed study published on Nature.com confirms what water utilities know and confront every day — water scarcity is already a problem, and its growth is forcing action now. Here are tangible steps that can be taken to meet current and future challenges.
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50+ Years With Neptune And Building On A Decade of R900 Technology
The Public Works Utilities of Billings, Montana, began their partnership with Neptune Technology back in the 1950s and was an early adopter of Neptune’s ARB® absolute encoder meter reading technology in the 1960s.
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How Superior Fresh Is Pioneering Sustainable Aquaculture With Pinnacle Ozone Solutions
See how Superior Fresh uses advanced ozone technology to maintain pristine aquaculture water quality, supporting sustainable Atlantic salmon production and organic farming in a pioneering integrated system.
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Earth Day: Alabama's Iron And Steel Manufacturing Contributes To Our Environment
I was in fifth grade on the first Earth Day. There was an abandoned earth mover in the woods near my elementary school, and Mrs. Fields’ social studies class painted it with bright colors to improve our visual environment. It was 1970, Richard Nixon was President, and later that year he would establish the Environmental Protection Agency.
Little did I know then that Earth Day is about science, there are economics within environmentalism, and I would have a career promoting stewardship of the earth.
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7 Things To Consider Before A Smart Meter Rollout
More than 45% of installed water meters in North America are equipped with automated meter reading technology, according to a recent IHS Technology 2014 report (“Water Meters Report – 2014”).
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Staying On Top of Water In Spite Of Flood
The biggest flood in decades roared through the Village of Johnson City, NY, one day in September 2011, and the water department lost everything, including their office, which was submerged in several feet of water. Working with Neptune Technology Group, Johnson City began installation of its new Neptune meters, along with E-Coder®)R900i™ combination solid state absolute encoder/RF meter interface units.
DRINKING WATER APPLICATION NOTES
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SensyMaster Thermal Mass Flowmeter8/3/2021
SensyMaster helps to improve the operating costs of the most cost intensive process in sewage plants: Aeration. High-measuring performance and state of the art technology helps customers increase plant efficiency.
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Drinking Water Testing By Ion Chromatography Using Ultrapure Water9/29/2022
This application note demonstrates the suitability of ultrapure water produced by a Milli-Q IQ 7000 water purification system for the IC analyses of inorganic ions and DBPs in drinking water.
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Analysis Of Pesticide Residue In Spinach Using The AutoMate-Q40 An Automated QuEChERS Solution10/16/2014
QuEChERS is a Quick-Easy-Cheap-Effective-Rugged-Safe extraction method that has been developed for the determination of pesticide residues in agricultural commodities.
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Application Note: Busseron Creek Watershed Partnership Addresses Concerns In A Rural Watershed1/20/2010As with other watershed organizations, the Busseron Creek Watershed Partnership (BCWP) exists because of surface water quality degradation. In this case, those waters drain 163,231 acres of a watershed that crosses the boundaries of Vigo, Clay, Green, and Sullivan counties in West- Central Indiana. By YSI
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The 'First Line Of Defense' In Protecting Membrane Filters8/9/2019
Multi-element, self-cleaning pretreatment filters optimize membrane filter life and production while minimizing maintenance and downtime.
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Aries Arsenic Reduction1/7/2026
Arsenic has no smell, taste, or color when dissolved in water even in high concentrations. It is a potential concern to those who live in areas with high natural deposits of arsenic, receive runoff from orchards, or from glass and electronic production waste. Long-term exposure to arsenic can cause a number of harmful effects on the human body including cancer, skin lesions, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, among others.
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Pile Cloth Media Filtration Removes 97% Of Microplastics From Wastewater12/6/2023
Learn about filtering microplastics from industrial wastewater prior to discharge, and how this is one way to effectively reduce the volume of this waste material from entering our surface water.
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Waste Technologies Transform Problems To Profit9/8/2015
Anaerobic digestion processes that radically improve the quality of wastewater while delivering green energy extracted from biological waste streams are emerging as a profitable way for agricultural and food processing industries cope with the twin impact of drought and pollution challenges.
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UV Technology Offers Solution For Emerging Water Crisis2/19/2014
Many are turning to UV as an effective barrier to enable the reuse of wastewater, for indirect reuse, and aquifer recharge.
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Alcoholic Beverage Fusel Alcohol Testing With Static Headspace9/2/2014
A static headspace method was developed using Teledyne Tekmar automated headspace vial samplers to meet the method requirements of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau of the US Department of the Treasury (TTB) method SSD: TM:2001 for testing fusel alcohols in alcoholic beverages.
LATEST INSIGHTS ON DRINKING WATER
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While most of us are routinely exposed to low levels of PFAS, some communities are exposed to far higher levels from nearby pollution sources. A new study shows that in one of these at-risk communities, children were more likely to develop asthma if their mothers were exposed to very high PFAS levels during pregnancy.
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A shift in how we approach source water protection is long overdue. Currently, we are trapped in a cycle of escalating costs, forced to treat symptoms like algae and invasive weeds expediently with chemicals while the underlying risk in the reservoir compounds. True risk management requires breaking this cycle.
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Einstein once said of compound interest, "He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn't, pays it." The same logic of compounding applies to the organic sediment accumulating on the floor of your drinking water reservoir. The longer you wait to address it, the more exponentially expensive it becomes to fix.
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The April 1 snowpack measurement has long been the single most important number in western water management, considered a strong proxy for how much water the mountains are holding in reserve. But in 2026, that savings account has been woefully deficient.
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Why Colorado River Negotiations Stalled, And How They Could Resume With The Possibility Of AgreementThe five most common sources of conflict between people are values, data, relationships, interests, and structure. The current Colorado River negotiations include all five.
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Water agencies across the U.S. are facing a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that poses a conundrum: Should they take a cautious or aggressive approach to treating PFAS contamination in their water system?
ABOUT DRINKING WATER
In most developed countries, drinking water is regulated to ensure that it meets drinking water quality standards. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administers these standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).
Drinking water considerations can be divided into three core areas of concern:
- Source water for a community’s drinking water supply
- Drinking water treatment of source water
- Distribution of treated drinking water to consumers
Drinking Water Sources
Source water access is imperative to human survival. Sources may include groundwater from aquifers, surface water from rivers and streams and seawater through a desalination process. Direct or indirect water reuse is also growing in popularity in communities with limited access to sources of traditional surface or groundwater.
Source water scarcity is a growing concern as populations grow and move to warmer, less aqueous climates; climatic changes take place and industrial and agricultural processes compete with the public’s need for water. The scarcity of water supply and water conservation are major focuses of the American Water Works Association.
Drinking Water Treatment
Drinking Water Treatment involves the removal of pathogens and other contaminants from source water in order to make it safe for humans to consume. Treatment of public drinking water is mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. Common examples of contaminants that need to be treated and removed from water before it is considered potable are microorganisms, disinfectants, disinfection byproducts, inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals and radionuclides.
There are a variety of technologies and processes that can be used for contaminant removal and the removal of pathogens to decontaminate or treat water in a drinking water treatment plant before the clean water is pumped into the water distribution system for consumption.
The first stage in treating drinking water is often called pretreatment and involves screens to remove large debris and objects from the water supply. Aeration can also be used in the pretreatment phase. By mixing air and water, unwanted gases and minerals are removed and the water improves in color, taste and odor.
The second stage in the drinking water treatment process involves coagulation and flocculation. A coagulating agent is added to the water which causes suspended particles to stick together into clumps of material called floc. In sedimentation basins, the heavier floc separates from the water supply and sinks to form sludge, allowing the less turbid water to continue through the process.
During the filtration stage, smaller particles not removed by flocculation are removed from the treated water by running the water through a series of filters. Filter media can include sand, granulated carbon or manufactured membranes. Filtration using reverse osmosis membranes is a critical component of removing salt particles where desalination is being used to treat brackish water or seawater into drinking water.
Following filtration, the water is disinfected to kill or disable any microbes or viruses that could make the consumer sick. The most traditional disinfection method for treating drinking water uses chlorine or chloramines. However, new drinking water disinfection methods are constantly coming to market. Two disinfection methods that have been gaining traction use ozone and ultra-violet (UV) light to disinfect the water supply.
Drinking Water Distribution
Drinking water distribution involves the management of flow of the treated water to the consumer. By some estimates, up to 30% of treated water fails to reach the consumer. This water, often called non-revenue water, escapes from the distribution system through leaks in pipelines and joints, and in extreme cases through water main breaks.
A public water authority manages drinking water distribution through a network of pipes, pumps and valves and monitors that flow using flow, level and pressure measurement sensors and equipment.
Water meters and metering systems such as automatic meter reading (AMR) and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) allows a water utility to assess a consumer’s water use and charge them for the correct amount of water they have consumed.