WATER INDUSTRY FEATURES, INSIGHTS, AND ANALYSIS
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After The Fire: What The 2026 Wildfires And El Niño Could Mean For U.S. Lakes And Reservoirs In 2027
In July, smoke from Canadian wildfires spread across the upper Midwest and Northeast. Now a strengthening El Niño is set to influence the coming winter. Both events matter to lake and reservoir managers because their effects on water quality will continue to emerge long after the skies clear or the El Niño passes.
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Minneapolis Flexes Its Mussels For Source Water Monitoring Solution
Protecting municipal drinking water requires rapid visibility into changing surface source conditions. Discover how combining biological indicators with continuous inline spectrometry delivers real-time contamination alerts, preventing costly treatment plant shutdowns and safeguarding consumer health.
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DEXSORB® Treatment At Groundwater Pump Station
Discover how upgrading existing filter infrastructure with advanced adsorbent media provided over 600 days of continuous PFAS removal, treating millions of gallons of contaminated groundwater to achieve strict drinking water compliance.
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DEXSORB® Treatment Of Surface Water For Gravity System
Discover how a dual-vessel lead-lag media system achieved continuous non-detect levels for target legacy contaminants, treating over 250,000 gallons of surface water to support regulatory compliance and municipal drinking water goals.
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Pretreatment Systems Enable Complete And More Economical PFAS Solutions For operators looking to optimize their PFAS removal systems, controlling the presence of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) offers an approach to minimizing operational costs due to granular activated carbon (GAC) reactivation and ion exchange media change-out.
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What Utilities Don't Know About GAC Reuse For PFAS For utilities building PFAS treatment systems, thermal reactivation of spent granular activated carbon (GAC) may sound like the obvious answer. However, service provider availability and location, specific media acceptance criteria including quantity thresholds, restrictions on GAC type and condition, and regulatory uncertainty can all determine whether reuse is a viable option.
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PFAS Funding Is Flowing — But Does The Water Sector Have Enough People To Deliver It? For several years, the PFAS conversation has centered on treatment options, testing, and funding. Those factors still matter, but they are no longer the primary constraint. Most utilities already understand the treatment routes available to them; the real challenge now is moving from technical possibility to operational performance, and that depends entirely on people.
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The Cost Of Waiting: Utilities Face A Narrowing PFAS Compliance Window For years, the water industry's PFAS conversation centered on monitoring, testing, and regulatory anticipation. Today, that phase is largely over.
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D.C. Circuit Upholds EPA's Hazardous Substance Designation For PFOA, PFOS
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently rejected industry challenges to the EPA's designation of PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances under CERCLA, leaving the agency's April 2024 rule fully intact. While the case centered on the EPA's authority to make the designation, its practical significance for water utilities is simpler: the liability concerns that have accompanied the rule since its adoption remain unresolved.
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How Donner Summit PUD Cut Backwash Water Use By 45% With Ultrasonic Algae Control
Recurring algal blooms severely compromise water treatment efficiency, clogging filters and wasting finished water through frequent backwashing. Targeted ultrasonic suppression controls raw water algae growth at the source, significantly improving influent turbidity and lowering operational costs.
VIEWS ON THE LATEST REGS
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For years, the water industry's PFAS conversation centered on monitoring, testing, and regulatory anticipation. Today, that phase is largely over.
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The U.S. EPA is testing a new procedural strategy to remove four PFAS drinking‑water limits from ongoing litigation, asking the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to invalidate those limits on the grounds that the EPA itself committed a procedural misstep when issuing the 2024 PFAS rule.
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Despite renewed public concern over fluoride and cognition, the National Toxicology Program’s findings focus on high‑fluoride groundwater conditions — not the controlled levels used in U.S. drinking water systems. Understanding that distinction is critical for utilities navigating policy questions and community expectations.
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In this Q&A, Dr. Elke Süss of Metrohm addresses the urgent need for haloacetic acid testing in response to “one of the most significant updates to EU drinking water monitoring in recent years.”
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With the U.S. EPA's PFAS rules now in place, utilities are finding themselves with a growing number of questions regarding how to treat these chemicals, the potential costs, and much more. For answers, Water Online's chief editor, Kevin Westerling, hosted an Ask Me Anything session featuring Ken Sansone, Senior Partner at SL Environmental Law Group; Kyle Thompson, National PFAS Lead at Carollo Engineers; and Lauren Weinrich, Principal Scientist at American Water.
MORE WATER INDUSTRY FEATURES
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Aerosolized hydrogen peroxide decontamination cuts isolator cycle times from 70 to 15 minutes while drastically reducing biocide and overall energy usage.
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Relying on assumptions when designing water treatment systems creates unnecessary financial and operational risks. Adopting predictive modeling and data-driven testing provides the precise, actionable insights required to optimize performance, manage costs, and ensure compliance.
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Filtration removes contaminants to ensure safety and is essential in various applications, from lab-scale tasks to GMP production. Explore how its simplicity and reliability make it indispensable.
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Single-future design assumptions are no longer sufficient. See what scenario modelling reveals about building treatment infrastructure that performs across decades of uncertainty.
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Managing municipal backflow prevention programs requires tracking thousands of assemblies, test notices, and certifications. Replacing manual recordkeeping with automated digital tracking eliminates backlogs, ensuring timely enforcement and protecting public drinking water systems from contamination.
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Engineers and project managers must take a complete cradle-to-grave approach when considering which technologies to implement as well as which vendors to partner with for their PFAS solution.
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An optimized in vitro transcription (IVT) platform enables scalable, high-yield, and cost-efficient mRNA therapeutic production by leveraging data-driven process optimization and enzyme innovation to overcome key manufacturing challenges.
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Learn how real-time monitoring with PAT enhances process control, shortens development timelines, and supports the shift toward continuous manufacturing in biopharmaceutical production.
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Increase process efficiency using high-capacity depth filtration to remove contaminants, protect downstream filters, and extend filter life for more consistent results.
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The City of Hot Springs, Arkansas knows the challenges of dealing with aging infrastructure well. The city’s 143-year-old system covers 923 miles of water mains in rocky terrain, making it difficult to detect leaks. That is why the utility’s water department decided to act.
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Learn why advanced oxidation processes are critical for treating 1,4-dioxane and how ozone-based systems can improve contaminant destruction and water quality.
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Manual grab sampling for chlorine residual compliance burdens operators with excessive drive time and laboratory costs. Adopting continuous, certified online monitoring satisfies regulatory reporting requirements while freeing technical staff for higher-priority operational tasks.
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Whether it’s a hurricane, flood, fire, or extended power outage, the systems that sustain communities are often the first to be tested. And among all treatment technologies available, membrane bioreactors (MBRs) have proven uniquely resilient.
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A tailored LC–MS approach enables sensitive detection and tracking of monoclonal antibody variants, supporting deeper product characterization and better control of quality‑impacting changes.
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Process intensification depends on more than facility changes. Smarter choices can help improve yield, throughput, and sustainability, turning an often-overlooked step into a meaningful contributor.
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Discover how science-based bio-decontamination strategies effectively eliminate invisible pathogens and rapidly restore facilities to operational safety following major infrastructure disruptions.
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Climate change is expanding source water variability beyond historical limits, forcing treatment plants to design for wider conditions—and making digital planning essential for resilient infrastructure decisions.
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Las Vegas Valley Water District is modernizing conservation efforts with Temetra, using high-resolution meter data to detect leaks sooner, engage customers, and secure water resources amid extreme drought conditions.