Source Water Monitoring

The purpose of source water monitoring is to enable drinking water treatment facilities to identify changes in water quality, implement treatment strategies based on the characteristics of the water, optimize the treatment processes, and take preventative actions to protect the source water from intentional and accidental contamination. Unexpected changes in water quality or the presence of atypical contaminants can adversely impact the ability of a treatment facility to meet its treatment goals and may put the public health at risk. As such, online monitoring of key water quality parameters plays a crucial role for achieving these goals by providing fast and reliable data that is spatially and temporally representative of the sample water. Although there are several possible locations for source water monitoring, it is most commonly done at the plant intake.