Microbial Contamination Monitoring For Water Distribution Systems

Back in 2014, Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals wrote an executive order for municipalities to boost their chlorine residuals as high as possible to burn off all biofilm and stop the outbreak of brain-eating amoeba (Naegleria fowleri) that had been detected as the cause of death in a number of individuals. To do so, utilities needed to understand how much chlorination was required to correct the problem. And they needed to know quickly. Traditional technology might have taken three to four months to confirm, assess and address. Using LuminUltra’s microbial monitoring tools, determinations were made within a couple of weeks.  

Water Online recently sat down with Pat Whalen, CEO of LuminUltra, to discuss microbiology, a subject that is relatively underappreciated within the water industry. In a wide-ranging conversation, Whalen discussed the importance of analytics, the power of data being stored and synthesized from the Cloud and microbiological monitoring done right. To learn more about microbiology, listen here: