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.
Wastewater from breweries is creating pollution problems in Lake Champlain.
In March, the Pentagon provided its most comprehensive report to date on the scope water contamination caused by military bases.
A federal agency has released a long-awaited report suggesting that perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) are more dangerous to human health than federal standards currently take into account.
A new study found that groundwater overpumping can result in potentially dangerous water quality problems.
As our society continues to embrace digital technology, it’s fair to say that the world of water utilities will be, a major beneficiary of this revolution.
Population health is a primary concern of water utilities, whether water demands are typical (daily demands) or an out-of-the ordinary event occurs and threatens the continuous, safe supply of potable water. Water utilities must be prepared to respond to emergencies before they occur, and this is where hydraulic modeling can be particularly useful.
Providing clean drinking water to its citizens since the early 1800s, Nashville’s city government has a deep-rooted history in the water industry. Today, Nashville Metro Water Services (MWS) serves more than 191,000 customers in Nashville and surrounding counties.
Can you imagine calling the electric company to demand a rebate because you had just received your bill and realized that over the past month, you inadvertently left all your lights on? As ludicrous as this scenario seems, it’s exactly the type of call water utilities receive from their customers.
As fresh water supplies dwindle, whether due to drought, contamination, or overuse, desalination becomes more attractive. Desalination plants must ensure proper flow measurement to monitor the resource — so proper installation and operation of these meters is extremely important.
At a certain point in the project development process you will have qualified a few dissolved air flotation (DAF) system manufacturers from a field of many. Now you have to decide which one’s DAF System design will best suit your needs. How do you choose?
There’s a lot to be said for the old adage, “Use the right tool for the job.” When it comes to flow meters for municipal or industrial water treatment plant (WTP) and wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) operations, however, the sheer number of choices can be overwhelming. That is where using a process of elimination to winnow out styles that don’t fit the performance criteria of an application can make it easier to compare the few remaining options. Here is a checklist of considerations to accelerate that process.
A lot has changed over the past 15 years. Back in the early 2000s, many utilities weren’t interested in understanding what was in their water beyond the contaminant and disinfection byproduct levels they were regulated to comply with. But as Pat Whalen, President and CEO of LuminUltra, explains in this ACE 2018 Water Talk interview, a steady stream of ongoing education and the modern data storage and analytics that cloud computing provides, has developed some rabid fans eager to explore the microbiology of their water systems.
As companies continue to innovate, they are finding that some of today’s most commonly used sterilization methods impose serious limitations in terms of efficacy, quality, or production processes.
Five years ago, the city of Detroit, MI, filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history at an estimated $18 to 20B. At the time, there was a lot of speculation in the water market as to how the city would continue to serve its citizens with viable water and sanitary sewer services. Ultimately Detroit reached a deal with neighboring Oakland, Wayne, and Macomb counties to create the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA), a new regional water and sewer authority. Spring forward to today and despite Detroit’s population continuing to dwindle, it’s water and sewer provision under the GLWA has recovered significantly.
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?
A Request for Startups post on January 3rd on the Y Combinator Blog caught my eye. The blogger talked about the need to prepare for things to get worse with regard to climate change, and called for applications for funding from those working on new technologies that could inexpensively produce clean water.
In August 2014, the city of Toledo, Ohio informed its residents (~500,000 people) that they should not use tap water for any purposes including bathing and cooking. The culprit: microcystin, a toxin produced by blue-green algae, had been detected in the city’s finished drinking water at concentrations 2.5 times the World Health Organization’s guideline value.
In the Semiconductor industry, raw water is treated in two steps; the first treatment is used to produce “make-up water” and the second phase involves turning make-up water into ultrapure water. This ultrapure water is then used for the final rinsing of fabricated wafers.
The Eagle Pack 720 PRO with Material Discrimination X-ray (MDX) inspects on a single production line all cartons of bone-in and boneless meats according to their unique specifications ensuring a safe product, while maximizing efficiencies and product yield.
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.
Food manufacturing companies invest millions of dollars annually into food magnetic separation equipment, proactively reducing the risk that any foreign object or contaminant will be embedded into a food product sold to grocery stores, restaurants, retailers, or general consumers. Manufacturers of food industrial magnets have adopted standard testing equipment that measures the holding force of a magnet. Here are some rules to follow to make sure you are using standard operating procedure when field testing magnetic strength to attain the most accurate results.
The use of chlorine to treat and disinfect drinking water and wastewater has been in practice for decades, with the earliest recorded attempt dating all the way back to 1893. Since then, it has come a long way.
Cities all over the country have been prioritizing clean water through a variety of different programs and the City of Brotherly Love is among the ranks.
It may not be immediately apparent just how crucial bubbles are to oil and gas operations. They play a critical role in a process known as dissolved gas flotation (DGF), which is imperative for removing contaminants. And not all bubbles are created the same.
Utilities continually face new challenges. Where treatment facilities were once expected to simply disinfect the water, they must now avoid creating disinfection byproducts during the process. New and more stringent regulations require removal of additional micropollutants and emerging contaminants. Finding the best technology to accomplish these goals can be difficult.
Despite evidence that often points to the contrary, many bodies of water around the country stand as prime examples of how environmental quality can be improved with the proper will and effort.
When it comes to the future of utility management, every arrow points toward greater adoption of 'smart' systems. Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) is smart, in a sense, but the mere existence of a SCADA system at your facility won't maximize efficiency and optimization. The capabilities and opportunities available to utilities through data and analytics are going largely untapped, according to two experts who joined Water Online for Water Talk, but a new initiative could help unlock its ever-growing potential.
The overall wastewater treatment process is complex, and each step is integral to ensuring water is properly purified. Effluent ends up in the plants, containing substances that must be removed before the water can be properly cleaned and returned for use. The range of potential contaminants is almost endless, and can include food, pulp, waste, or other substances. Afterwards, the water requires further scrubbing, with the aid of bacteria. It is in this part of the process that compressed air (ideally provided by energy-efficient rotary lobe blowers) plays a vital role.
On January 1st 2017, Philadelphia’s controversial “soda tax” went into effect, adding a 1.5-cents-per-ounce on sugary beverages sold in the city. Several cities across the U.S. have enacted similar taxes in a bid to battle diet-related diseases such as obesity and fund more healthy activities within their communities.
Contaminants are a fact of life for food manufacturers, making contaminant detection systems a necessity. This article explains the process of calculating the ROI of foreign body detection systems.
Aside from having to deal with weather, mud, and the occasional slippery rock, there are key issues related to sample quality that can make testing water specimens from the field a bigger challenge than lab testing. That is why, when it comes to confidence and accuracy in onsite testing for nitrates, nitrites, phosphates, pH, and more, there’s nothing like using the right tools to do the job on the spot. Here is a quick checklist of trials, tribulations, and potential solutions for streamside sampling.
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.
The City of Paramount conducted a pilot study for arsenic, manganese and iron treatment system at their Well 15 site. The onsite pilot test was designed to demonstrate the performance of the Loprest Water Treatment Company treatment process proposed for the new treatment plant.
