Town Of Cortland, Illinois Case Study

The Town of Cortland, owns and operates a Public Water System (PWS) to supply potable water to approximately 2,100 residents. Raw water is pumped from a deep sandstone well, chlorinated and then fed to the distribution system. Naturally occurring radionuclides in Cortland’s raw water source exceed current Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCL’s) for Gross Alpha Emitters and Combined Radium.

Cortland selected Water Remediation Technology’s (WRT) Z-88™ Radium Removal Process as a possible cost effective solution for their radium problem. WRT provided a one GPM (gallons per minute) pilot plant, which was delivered and installed on September 22, 2003.

The purpose of this pilot study is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the treatment process on high radium and gross alpha water, establish design parameters for the full scale systems and meet regulatory piloting requirements.

The pilot unit successfully lowered the gross alpha and radium levels during the planned 30 day study, but exceeded the MCL’s later in the test, due to the relatively high barium concentration in the feed water and the small amount of Z-8 8TM media in the pilot system.