The so-called "brain-eating" amoeba, a water-based threat that poses a risk to water utilities, has taken another life.
Flushing contact lenses is contributing to water pollution because lenses do not break down entirely in wastewater treatment systems, according to a new study.
Thousands of Florida residents joined together for a demonstration on Sunday conveying a commitment to clean water.
Vermont is bulking up its drinking water for PFAS by adding three substances to the warning.
Two businesses are being sued by the U.S. Attorney’s office for allegedly contaminating drinking water on Long Island.
The city of Newark is being sued over what an environmental group calls “dangerously high” lead levels in tap water.
Threatened by water scarcity due to severe drought, Reserva Conchal turned to Fluence’s Nirobox for a sustainable, reliable, and cost-effective seawater desalination solution.
For decades, wastewater management has been a growing problem for the Wider Caribbean Region (WCR), a problem that regional governments have long understood as a threat to the economy, the environment, and to public health. In the Caribbean, most wastewater from cities, industry, and agriculture pours directly into surface water or into the sea completely untreated, degrading residents’ quality of life, as well as the region’s biodiversity, pristine blue waters, and reefs, which are the lifeblood of the vital tourism industry.
Located at the mouth of the Big Cottonwood Canyon, the Big Cottonwood WTP is one of three water treatment facilities providing treated water to Salt Lake City (SLC), Utah. The utility distributes water through about 1,300 miles of transmission and distribution pipe to over 90,500 connections. Recently, the Big Cottonwood WTP was recognized for delivering 16 years of high quality water and received the Directors Award from the EPA & AWWA Partnership for Safe Water.
Jennifer Aquino, Chief Operating Officer at Cenduit recently had the opportunity to visit with several clients and opinion leaders on a year-end “listening tour,” to discuss their issues and goals for 2019 and beyond. Read what they had to say regarding the industry’s challenges and opportunities.
Mixing is something that is often taken for granted when designing systems for water and wastewater treatment. Perhaps “taken for granted” is too harsh a term. Let’s instead say that while designing a treatment unit operation or process, mixing as a phenomenon is automatically assumed to occur — an assumption that forms the basis for process controls, performance guarantees and measurement methods and locations.
The need to recycle wastewater has grown dramatically in various markets. Due to the increasing drought, rural villages suffer from lack of water for agricultural needs. Fluence delivers a revolutionary aerobic wastewater treatment solution is modular and reduces energy usage by up to 90% compared to conventional treatment.
Pump clogs cause sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) and backed up lift stations that damage the environment. They also put the public health at risk and lead to regulatory fines for the utility.
As water utilities migrate toward remote system monitoring and real-time control, the risks associated with cybersecurity tick upward as well. While the rewards of digitalization offer real promise, the associated complexity and security concerns pose corresponding risks. That is why it is important to have an overall risk-management process for the organizational level, the business process level, and for the information system and data levels as well.
Our environment is rife with testimonials to the law of unintended consequences. When it comes to water treatment, the compound 1,2,3-trichloropropane (TCP) is the latest surprise making its way through the remediation lifecycle.
A water utility in the Midwest USA uses Monochloramine treatment in their two surface water treatment plants to disinfect raw water and establish residual disinfectant prior to discharge to their distribution system.
Almost 30 years ago, Calgon Carbon introduced one of the first advanced ultraviolet (UV) oxidation processes to remediate contaminated groundwater. Then soon after, Calgon Carbon became the first company to adapt the technology to cost-effectively inactivate pathogens in surface water. These breakthroughs have established Calgon Carbon as a world leader in the use of UV technology for disinfection and oxidation to treat drinking water, wastewater, groundwater, process water and ballast water.
For both disinfection and TOC-reduction applications, NeoTech Aqua Solutions’ patented ReFleX™ UV chamber technology represents the state-of-the-art in high-efficiency UV systems by reflecting over 99% of the UV we generate back into the water.
The NeoTech Aqua Disinfection Series is specially designed to disinfect water and is an essential component in advanced oxidation processes.
NeoTech Aqua Solutions’ Patriot Series utilizes D438 chamber technology in a stacked and manifolded configuration to support larger flow volumes. By integrating NeoTech Aqua’s patented ReFleX chamber technology, Patriot systems provide the most efficient and versatile UV water treatment equipment available for large volume users. Further, when configured as an n+1 design, the NeoTech Aqua’s Patriot systems meet most redundancy requirements.
NeoTech Aqua Solutions provides the most efficient and cost-effective UV systems for destroying Total Organic Carbons (TOC’s) in water. Whether your destroying NDMA, 1,4-dioxane, TCE, MTBE, urea, endocrine disruptors or other organics, only NeoTech Aqua provides ultraviolet TOC reduction with a treatment chamber optimized for low pressure mercury lamps. As a result, NeoTech Aqua’s UV systems achieve a three times greater TOC reduction per kilowatt compared to standard UV systems, reducing our clients’ costs and energy consumption. In addition to efficiently generating ample 185 nm UV for TOC reduction, NeoTech Aqua’s TOC reduction systems also generate significant levels of 254 nm UV which serve as a powerful disinfectant, providing you both TOC-free and organism-free product water.
The NeoTech CU4-X™ UV Water Treatment Control Interface is a remote and compact master controller capable of managing up to four NeoTech ultraviolet water treatment chambers independently and simultaneously.
Nick Burns, director of water treatment technology for (the Americas region of) Black & Veatch, discusses the health concerns, current regulatory status, and documented presence of perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), also sometimes called perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), in drinking water supplies — as determined by sampling under the U.S. EPA's Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule 3 (UCMR3).
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.
It’s no secret that the U.S. EPA has changed course in the last year. But how have those changes affected local water and wastewater treatment operations? And how are those operations going to evolve along with the federal agency?
PFC contamination is the number one drinking water issue today. So how are local and federal leaders working to put an end to it?
Last year was full of twists and turns for the drinking water and wastewater treatment industries. What can 2017’s biggest stories tell us about what’s to come this year?
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.
In drinking water treatment’s ongoing battle between disinfection and disinfection byproducts (DBPs), most water utility customers are oblivious to the process. One thing they do notice, however, is when their water smells or tastes bad. Here are some insights that can help water treatment plant (WTP) operators deal with their internal concerns about DBPs and residual chlorine or ammonia levels, as well as their external concerns about customer perceptions of water quality.
Understand the analytical challenges faced when implementing the BPOG protocol for four SUS components.
Filtration has been around for a long, long time, so it may be that most treatment plant operators feel pretty informed about its capabilities. But hearing from Brian Frewerd, Director of Application Engineering with Parkson Corporation and Water Talk guest, will likely prove enlightening. Frewerd provides background on sand filtration for tertiary treatment applications, followed by insight on notable technology improvements and performance milestones
Automated metering systems (AMSs) or “smart meters” can provide valuable data for electric and water utilities. Data analytics can be used to improve customer service, boost conservation, monitor the system, and even forecast demand. An ultimate goal might be to eventually monitor everything from streetlight intensity to fire hydrants.
Corrosion control has always been a priority for distributing safe drinking water throughout the world’s networks of pipeline. This has become all the more critical following the outrageous lead poisoning revelations in Flint, MI — an incident caused directly by corrosion of the city’s lead-based infrastructure.
Mixing is something that is often taken for granted when designing systems for water and wastewater treatment. Perhaps “taken for granted” is too harsh a term. Let’s instead say that while designing a treatment unit operation or process, mixing as a phenomenon is automatically assumed to occur — an assumption that forms the basis for process controls, performance guarantees and measurement methods and locations.
As our ability to measure contaminants at ever smaller concentrations improves, “emerging contaminants” are on the rise. Per the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), emerging contaminants are chemicals or materials characterized by a perceived, potential, or real threat to human health or the environment.
The membrane bioreactor industry has matured past the point of being an experiment or a niche technology. Advancements, as well as more recent adoptions by high-profile users, are providing wastewater treatment plant operators with more incentive and a better business case to retrofit their systems.
Beyond the existential philosophy implications, the consequences of a pipeline leaking in a forest when no one is around highlight the desirability of leak detection systems in water distribution utilities as a whole. As the following experiences show, leak detection can have its entertaining side. On the other side of the coin, however, the consequences of not monitoring leaks can also trigger a tsunami of costs far beyond the expense of pipeline repair alone.
District Sales Engineer Andy Singer has spent enough time troubleshooting problems in the field that not much surprises him anymore. When it comes to dry barrel fire hydrants, though, he still gets a chuckle out of some of his more outrageous experiences. Here is his educational and entertaining take on the care and maintenance of fire hydrants, and ways to maximize a utility’s return on what potentially can be a 50+-year infrastructure investment.
How a Leading Product Lifecycle Management Software Developer Transforms Pirates into Paying Customers.
Many utilities today are investing in advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). However, many of these same utilities often don’t realize the breadth of capabilities that a smart utility network (SUN) now offers. In the past, AMI networks were typically used for accurate metering and billing. Today, a smart utility network builds upon traditional AMI to provide multiple advantages across the full water cycle — and beyond.
If A Pipe Leaks In A Forest, Does It Make A Sound? (Part I) addressed condition assessment and leak detection from the perspective of surprises that can arise when “hidden” problems are revealed by acoustic technology. This article introduces several more eye-opening experiences with permanent and mobile acoustic leak detection equipment, plus examples of just how expensive undetected leaks can become when they turn into full-blown water main breaks.
Eastern Municipal Water District (EMWD) serves about 142,000 customers in Riverside County, CA. The EMWD service area is one of the largest for any water district in arid southern California. On the drinking water side, EMWD manages two water treatment plants and over 15 reservoirs. With 70% of the district’s water coming from the Metropolitan Water District with chloramine disinfection, EMWD has become reliant on chloramine disinfection to manage long transmission lines and longer detention times.
Protecting the public health and ensuring water is safe to drink is the highest goal of water system managers. Negative health effects are indicated from exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), such as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctyl sulfonate (PFOS). Based on lab studies, the U.S. EPA has issued a health advisory for PFOA and PFOS in drinking water of 70 parts per trillion. While health advisories are not enforceable, they offer a margin of safety for consumers.
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.
For most of the United States, we’ve reached the time of year where Americans desire to maintain a perfectly green lawn starts to be tested by the warmer and dryer summer months. From the water industry’s perspective, it’s staggering just how many billions of gallons of treated water ends up being sprayed across our hallowed front and back yards in maintaining a full and aesthetically-pleasing lawn.
