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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A CDMO guide to implementing EU Annex 1 for modern sterile fill/finish facilities, covering cleanroom design, contamination control, utilities, personnel, monitoring, and audit essentials.
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Discover how PFAS treatment technologies can provide safer drinking water and limit the amount of PFAS in the environment.
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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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A DWTP client in Alaska detected elevated PFAS contamination levels in two groundwater wells supplying drinking water to 85 service connections. PFAS concentrations are provided in Table 1, where combined concentration of EPA PFAS6 was detected at 490 to 810 ppt.
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Ion exchange (IX) is a tried-and-true method of removing metals and other inorganic compounds from water. Arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, nickel, selenium, radionuclides, and zinc are just a few examples of the compounds that our ion exchange systems have removed from water.
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Cognitive endpoints in Alzheimer's trials haven't kept pace with the shift to earlier-stage treatment. Modern trials need tools built to catch subtle change.
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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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Calgon Carbon’s AquaKnight GC systems are designed from the top down to improve flow, adsorption, and media life.
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Read about how mixers help prevent stratification, maintain consistent disinfectant distribution, and reduce sediment buildup, thereby mitigating public health risks associated with water storage.
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Managing persistent water contaminants requires shifting from temporary removal to complete lifecycle destruction. Sustainable remediation strategies target upstream industrial discharge and concentrate waste streams to permanently safeguard drinking water sources from re-contamination.
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How one utility got ahead of customer request sampling instead of falling behind on it.
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Securing urban water futures requires shifting toward resilient, multi-source supplies. Advanced oxidation provides a critical barrier against emerging contaminants, enhancing treatment efficiency and ensuring long-term reliability without chemical residuals. Explore the foundations of engineering a decentralized, drought-proof water supply.
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Amid scrutiny of the financial conflicts of interest in biomedical research, new federal rules aim to improve transparency and preserve the integrity of publicly funded research.
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Ultrafiltration offers a precise way to concentrate and purify proteins while removing smaller molecules. Learn how technique choice and membrane selection influence recovery, purity, and consistency.
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Learn about a novel solution dramatically improving the purification and yield of promising nanoscale vesicles for medical applications.
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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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See how one utility moved off spreadsheets and onto a real system.
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PFAS rules are shifting fast. Learn how utilities can futureproof treatment strategies with flexible designs, smart staging, and emerging technologies — avoiding stranded assets and staying ahead of tomorrow’s regulations.