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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As utilities prepare for the pending 4-ppt PFAS drinking water MCL, many are discovering that legacy lead/lag designs — workhorses for decades when treating contaminants in the ppm and ppb range — simply are not optimized for the parts per trillion-level (ppt) precision PFAS demands.
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Explore how efficient powder-liquid mixing and sterile filtration preserve media integrity and support reproducibility in biopharmaceutical workflows, with promising scalability for larger-volume applications.
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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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Like a referee in a contest, advanced analytical methods are essential to mediate the push and pull of different factors influencing therapeutic efficacy.
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This application note will explore how active control programs lower operational costs of compliant contaminant removal.
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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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The Lee Company highlights contamination risks in fluidic systems, offering guidance on detection, prevention, safety screens, and ROB number comparisons to ensure long-term performance and reliability.
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Learn practical strategies for improving RF dynamic range through noise reduction, linearity optimization, filtering, calibration, and advanced signal conditioning techniques.
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Poor solubility of active pharmaceutical ingredients can hinder drug effectiveness. Learn how innovative formulation strategies enhance solubility and bioavailability to improve therapeutic outcomes for challenging drug candidates.
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NMR reveals far more than structure, offering insights into purity and molecular behavior. Advanced analysis unlocks deeper value from data to better understand mixtures and 3D structures.
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For most water utilities, master and production meters represent the system's financial and operational truth. These meters quantify the volume of water entering the distribution network, support water accountability programs, validate NRW calculations, and influence everything from treatment costs to rate structures.
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Learn why piloting PFAS treatment is essential to reduce risk, optimize costs, and ensure compliance—plus the seven key steps to design a pilot that delivers reliable, real-world results.
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In this article, we outline the sources, occurrence, known health issues, and mitigation options for specific contaminants.
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Explore how ozone-based treatment supports data center water reuse by controlling biofilm, organics, metals, and microbial risks while reducing freshwater demand.
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The Trial Master File (TMF) landscape in 2025 will require companies to stay attuned to the evolving ICH E6(R3) guidelines and the full implementation of the CTIS.
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Discover common pitfalls in cell washing and pre-formulation, including incomplete contaminant removal, manual handling, and throughput issues that compromise product quality and efficiency.
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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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This case study demonstrates the effectiveness of a new technology for removing PFAS from well water to below the EPA’s detection limits.