DRINKING WATER

GettyImages-2188554976_450_300 Why Planning Is The Hero Of AMI Deployment

Thorough planning, accurate data, and strong communication are the keys to successful AMI deployments, preventing costly disruptions and ensuring technology delivers long-term operational and customer service value.

DRINKING WATER CASE STUDIES AND WHITE PAPERS

  • PWSA Reduces Customer Request Fulfillment From 4 Months To 14 Days

    Due to recent LCR exceedances, PWSA faced skyrocketing customer requests on top of the order to replace 7% of their roughly 18,000-33,000 lead service lines every year. In addition, their Lead and Copper Compliance (LCR) and Lead Service Line Replacement testing program (LSLR) required immense amounts of manpower. These two events combined to require thousands of point-of-use kits to be collected and tested every year. They looked to 120WA to solve the challenges of siloed data sources, kit delivery and pickup, lab coordination, and distribution of results.

  • Real-Time Digital Analytics Identifies More Than 180 Million Gallons Of Annual CSO Reduction

    The City of Richmond turns to Xylem Wastewater Network Optimization to identify critical CSO-reducing projects, putting them on a path to regulatory compliance while avoiding costly and unnecessary infrastructure.

  • Why Material Selection Matters

    The Tri-County Water Authority (TCWA) was formed in 1991 as a not-for-profit water utility serving portions of Jackson, Cass and Bates counties, Missouri. When the system was first established, about half of the pipe installed were ductile iron and half were plastic PVC. Today, the authority’s 120 miles of pipe are approximately 75% ductile iron and 25% plastic PVC.

  • Managing Water Loss In Four Easy Steps

    A practical approach to detecting leaks and reducing non-revenue water.

    Water utilities are charged with an incredibly important task – providing safe and affordable water to communities in the face of aging infrastructure, funding gaps, and changing regulatory requirements. Specifically, when considering water loss control, leakage, and operational inefficiencies, costs may appear to be unaffordable.

  • Legionella: The “Quiet Pandemic"

    Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is likely that many people have forgotten about Legionella, which has been described as a “quiet pandemic” by legislators in the United States. While the focus of many government health authorities has been to react to and reduce the impact of COVID-19, the many stay at home orders issued, and the increase in employees working from home has been ideal for Legionella bacteria present in cooling towers in commercial systems.

  • Direct Burial Meters Offer Significant Savings

    Most pipelines are below grade, so vaults have traditionally been installed to provide access to any place where a meter and valve are necessary. Vault pits tend to be large, and the installation is by far the biggest expense of a metering project. The good news is that direct burial metering options can greatly simplify the installation requirements, significantly lowering the costs, while also boosting safety.

  • Ozone Makes A Comeback

    Ozone has been a proven effective method of water treatment and disinfection for well over a century.

  • Advanced Diagnostics of Thermal Mass Flow Meters

    Many thermal mass flow meters are of the insertion type. As a starting point, proper insertion depth and straight run per the manufacturer’s recommendations should be adhered to.

  • Better Drinking Water Quality Starts Upstream

    While every potable water treatment process requires a balance of chemistry and biology to deliver safe, clean drinking water, added concerns from upstream stormwater or agricultural runoff only make the job that much more difficult. How can we do a better job of safeguarding water treatment plant (WTP) operations while protecting the health of water utility customers against threats of upstream nonpoint source (NPS) pollution?

  • What Is Sustainable Flocculation And What Are Sustainable Flocculants?

    In most standard drinking water and wastewater treatment systems, there is a flocculation process that is used to reduce the concentrations of solids within the effluent stream. This particular process makes use of substances that aid in the clumping together of suspended particles among other contaminants in a clarifier system.

DRINKING WATER APPLICATION NOTES

DRINKING WATER PRODUCTS

ClorTec T systems easily control sodium hypochlorite production and provide a powerful disinfection method for any application. T systems meet requirements for 2 to 36 lb/day (0.9 to 16 kg/day) chlorine equivalent. Applications include potable water, wastewater, odor and corrosion control, cooling towers, oxidation and swimming pool disinfection.

LeakFX is a data analysis tool for water utilities to quickly summarize, categorize, and prioritize suspected water leaks in their distribution system.  This new tool saves water utilities hours of individual logger analysis every day.  Instead of selecting logger by logger to view leak information, LeakFX combines all suspected leaks in one streamlined report.

The PipeRank™ machine learning technology delivered by Echologics, leverages historical failure data and other site-specific data to accurately predict which of your water pipelines will break next, allowing you to prioritize segments for further inspection and those that need to be replaced immediately.

The PTBT1 is a lab-accurate water quality pocket tester that allows you to use your mobile device and the X2 app to measure, store and export data.

HYMAX GRIP  joins and restrains a wide selection of pipes of different types and diameters, easily and reliably. Due to its patented design, it allows the joining of pipes of the same or different materials and diameters and prevents axial pipe movement.

Interchangeable sensors and transmitters provide ideal flexibility for flow measurement.

LATEST INSIGHTS ON DRINKING WATER

DRINKING WATER VIDEOS

Architect Kate Orff sees the oyster as an agent of urban change. Bundled into beds and sunk into city rivers, oysters slurp up pollution and make legendarily dirty waters clean — thus driving even more innovation in "oyster-tecture." Orff shares her vision for an urban landscape that links nature and humanity for mutual benefit.

The recoating of a potable water tank in Lancaster, PA, included an already tight timeframe and several challenges that cause delays.

Nick Dugan is an environmental engineer working in EPA's Cincinnati laboratory. He is currently focused on bench-scale trials evaluating the impact of common drinking water treatment oxidants on intact, toxin-producing cyanobacterial cells over a range of water quality conditions.

In this episode of the Water Online Show, hosts Travis Kennedy and Kevin Westerling explore AI's transformative role in water utility operations with guest Dave Brown, Director of Maintenance at Eastern Municipal Water District (EMWD), which serves nearly a million customers across 682 square miles in Southern California.

Stanford Earth’s Rosemary Knight recently spearheaded a project to map underground freshwater resources and forecast the intrusion of saltwater into aquifers beneath the California coastal town of Marina.

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:

  1. Source water for a community’s drinking water supply
  2. Drinking water treatment of source water
  3. 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.