Water utilities must protect the public health by producing a final product that meets all regulatory requirements. In addition, the water must be pleasing to the customer, with no taste or odor issues. And finally, utilities must stay abreast of emerging contaminants, health advisories, and new regulations. It’s a constant challenge to shoulder these responsibilities while staying within tight budgets. Utilities need a technology that helps them achieve multiple goals cost-effectively.
Sampling and laboratory testing are major responsibilities for water professionals. Test results are used for process control, and ultimately to determine that water is safe for drinking, reuse, or discharge to the environment. Regulatory agencies rely on reported results for proof of permit compliance. So, obtaining representative, properly collected and preserved samples is the first critical step to ensure accurate test results.
Since 1999, when business people at more than 150,000 companies worldwide wanted to keep better track of their customers — and be more responsive — they turned to Salesforce.com and its industry-leading customer relationship management (CRM) software. Now, companies looking for ideas on sustainability, in terms of water recycling, can turn to the new Salesforce Tower in San Francisco as a leading-edge environmental solution as well. It is estimated that the building’s water recycling system will save more than 7.5-million gallons of drinking water annually — enough to supply more than 16,000 San Francisco residents.
One of the many travesties in the failure to properly protect drinking water in the United States is EPA’s decades-long inability to set an enforceable drinking standard for perchlorate, a chemical that harms the thyroid — critical for normal growth and development — and that contaminates drinking water systems serving over 17 million people in the U.S.
Water and wastewater utilities must monitor numerous aspects of their systems on a continuous basis. Various instruments are used to measure these processes, producing volumes of data every day. Endress+Hauser is a leading supplier of products and services for process measurement and automation. Water Online spoke with three of Endress+Hauser's experts to find out how data loggers and managers can save costs while providing effective data management.
While natural disasters such as forest fires can cause lakes to burn and become acidic, human activities can also cause water pollution that risks or reduces the quality of waterbodies. The quality of freshwater sources, including lakes, is threatened by both population growth and industrialization.
World Water Day (Thursday, March 22nd this year) does a great job of focusing our attention on water issues. And especially with storms on the East Coast and drought in the West, not to mention the looming possibility that officials will have to shut off the taps in Cape Town sometime this summer, a lot of the messaging around water is pretty much like being smothered in a wet blanket.
Without leaders on the ground and in local, district, and national governments championing water services for Everyone Forever, the wells and pumps don’t mean much.
By now, just about everyone in the U.S. has heard about Flint, Michigan’s water woes. Despite the many issues raised by that incident, urban water systems are not the sole reason the 2017 Report Card from the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the U.S. drinking water infrastructure an overall “D” grade. Hidden within that disheartening rating are the harsh realities faced by rural water systems.
For many people, hot springs conjure up thoughts of cleansing and purity. For centuries, humans have visited hot springs to relax and recover. But as with any natural water body, hot springs can also exhibit biota that can infect and in severe cases kill.
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