Water quality standards introduced by Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) came under renewed scrutiny late last month as Miami-Dade’s government operations committee joined a lawsuit to challenge them.
After the Supreme Court cleared the way for an Obama-era environmental regulation to go into effect, Congress may become a hot spot for a major fight over water policy.
In laying out the U.S. EPA’s agenda for 2018, Administrator Scott Pruitt indicated that the agency would focus on scaling back Obama-era clean water regulations while ramping up the fight against lead contamination in public drinking water.
Massachusetts faces a deep problem with raw sewage.
Though the current U.S. EPA administration is boasting about its action to clean up the nation’s Superfund sites, it appears that it has not done as much as implied.
With cuts being made to the budget of the federal EPA, individual states are having to step up and take matters of protecting drinking and source water into their own hands. Last year, none were more forceful with this change than Ohio.
Parkson recently had a very successful pilot test at the facility of a bio-feedstock supplier of waste products turned into fuel. The Rotoshear® unit, equipped with a .060” wedgewire screen, successfully removes solids directly from Industrial Waste Hauling trucks to recover grease. Screening this material before it enters the receiving station allows the facility to focus on proper treatment of the industrial wastewater rather than the expensive downtime to drain and clean their receiving pond.
To sustain the environment and smart community growth while protecting public health, engineers, municipal health officials, and regulators need innovative wastewater treatment solutions. The latest evolution of decentralized systems can efficiently handle residential and commercial daily flows and are a cost-effective alternative to the large, centralized wastewater treatment plants of the past.
Potable reuse offers a massive opportunity to recover water from the wastewater process, but projects face a variety of barriers to getting off the ground. Most successful early adopters engaged early with their constituents and implemented smaller-scale demonstration projects that were accessible to the public to prove the technology and process.
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.
When it comes to providing wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) solutions for isolated, low-volume applications, it is true that good things can indeed come in small packages. The execution of membrane aerated biofilm reactor (MABR) technology in compact self-sufficient arrays — including transportable containerized units — now offers wastewater treatment with enhanced nutrient removal for stand-alone applications and remote points of use.
For those who appreciate the old maxim about catching more flies with honey, the logic of creating a more favorable biological environment for better biological nutrient removal (BNR) makes perfect sense. Worldwide implementations of flat-sheet membrane aerated biofilm reactor (MABR) technology are doing exactly that — in less space, with less energy, and with lower operating expenditure (OPEX) for aeration and chemical treatment. Here’s how:
Large-scale water-reuse treatment plants have had sustainable impact in populated areas where the volume of water to be treated and reused in a concentrated area makes them practical. Today, the flat-sheet membrane aerated biofilm reactor (MABR) technology that is delivering high-quality wastewater treatment to remote locations is poised to realize the promise of sustainable water reuse in those same locations.
Wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) designers and decision-makers tasked with finding more cost-effective performance for challenging applications want new options. Here is how flat-sheet membrane aerated biofilm reactor (MABR) technology tweaks the chemical and biological functions of conventional activated sludge (CAS) processes to reduce energy consumption and operating expenses (OPEX) in demanding applications.
Over the last several years the wastewater reuse segment of the water industry has experienced both rapid growth and tremendous change. Global demand for increased water supplies fuels the development of alternative water sources, including reclaimed wastewater.
The Helixpress® unit is the cost-effective solution for dewatering the screenings collected by any type of screen. It is an all-in-one conveyor, compactor and dewaterer. It utilizes a combination of drainage, compaction and dewatering to reduce weight and volume and ultimately decrease hauling and disposal costs.
The Series 71P11A Gas Pressure Reducing and Shutoff Valve is a diaphragm-type gas pressure regulating valve designed for use on chlorine, sulfur dioxide and ammonia gas service. The valve is used in a gas dispensing system to prevent liquefaction of the gas by providing a controlled pressure drop in the piping system. Downstream pressure is regulated to a reduced value by adjustment of the control setting. If the downstream pressure exceeds the pressure at which the valve is set, gas flow will be shut off.
The Pneumatic Dynamic Lifter is a very responsive compact wastewater relief valve that can handle high pressures and uses a compressed air cylinder to hold the valve closed. This chamber is fitted with a relief pilot that is normally closed as long as the line pressure is lower than the set point. If pressure rises above the set point, the relief pilot opens, causing the air in the cylinder to vent, which in turn opens the valve. The valve closes drip tight when pressure falls below the set point.
As part of Toray’s MEMBRAY MBR series, the NHP (New High Performance) module features thin membrane flat sheets that are densely packed into easily interchangeable cassettes. These cassettes allow for a higher packing density than what was originally thought possible with flat plate designs. The thin membranes are also highly flexible and allow for more movement, resulting in increased vibrations during aeration. This helps dislodge sludge and improve cleaning efficiency, all with less energy use.
Mainsail Global’s Boone diffuser membranes are designed for the petro-chemical market with hydrogenated acrylonitrile-butadiene rubber (HNBR). These custom membranes are built for durability, and can withstand long-term exposure to heat, oil and chemicals readily present in petro-chemical wastewater streams. With excellent tensile strength, abrasion and ozone resistance and higher modulus retention at elevated temperatures, Boone membranes combine the physical strength and chemical makeup of HNBR for an ideal solution in petro-chemical wastewater treatment.
The AquaPrime system utilizes a disk configuration and the exclusive OptiFiber® cloth filtration media to effectively filter screened, de-gritted, raw municipal sewage. This proven technology easily handles significantly higher solids loading rates compared to secondary clarified effluent (by a factor of 3 to 5 times) with the added ability to sustain a low TSS concentration, making it an ideal solution for both wet weather treatment and primary treatment in lieu of conventional sedimentation systems.
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?
Though some preliminary regulations have taken place to curb the presence of microplastics in the environment, more research is needed to determine what role wastewater treatment plants can and will play in solving the problem for good.
With water treatment plant operators around the country relying on paper and pen to record critical quality data, there is an opportunity to make life easier online.
As excess nutrients continue to pollute source water, bringing dead zones and toxic chemicals, it’s time for the disparate agencies that can make a difference to band together.
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection has compiled a report on the world’s leading stormwater management solutions and challenges. Reviewing its contents can be an opportunity for communities to build stormwater strength together.
A couple of weeks ago, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt called PFAS groundwater contamination “a national priority” and pledged action at an EPA national PFAS leadership summit.
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.
Over the past decade, there has been a considerable effort in the water sector to address industry shortcomings through collaboration. And perhaps there’s been no greater initiative to try to help water utility managers in their day-to-day and future planning than the Effective Utility Management (EUM) Initiative.
The Mountain Regional Water District is a Special Service District of the county that was established by the Summit County Commission in 2000 to regionalize water service by consolidating several public and private water companies.
Affordability and maintainability are two of the greatest challenges small municipalities face when constructing and managing sewer infrastructure. With these challenges in mind, it’s important for small cities to choose wisely when investing in a wastewater system that needs to last for 30-60 years.
Among water treatment industry professionals, consensus is growing that small- to medium-scale decentralized desalination and wastewater treatment plants are the way forward in a water-stressed future. But governments continue to announce new water mega-infrastructure projects at an alarming rate. Because the public policy debate appears to have simply not caught up with current technology, many companies and NGOs with a focus on small- to medium-scale water treatment or renewable energy have begun to see the Caribbean as something of a new frontier.
Headlines in 2018 were dominated by the red tide along Florida’s Gulf Coast, which persisted for months, causing human respiratory illnesses, the deaths of dozens of Florida’s beloved dolphins and manatees, and hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tourism revenue and cleanup costs. Here are insights on how to forestall becoming the next city to make national headlines related to harmful algal blooms.
Wastewater service charges vary considerably across EPA regions and States. That’s one of the key findings from the National Association of Clean Water Agencies’ (NACWA) Cost of Clean Water Index. If you live in Montana, Wyoming or the Dakotas (EPA Region 8), your average service charge of $261 a year is considerably less than the $884 your fellow Americans up in New England (EPA Region 1) are paying. As you can imagine, much of the difference is to do with population size and geography.
One of the great turnaround stories in the history of our nation’s water bodies is that of the Chesapeake Bay. Since 1976 when the Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) first undertook a comprehensive study of the Bay, efforts to address excessive nitrogen and phosphorous degradation of water quality have steadily improved the Bay’s complex ecosystem.
Salvator Mundi sold for nearly half a billion dollars. Walter Isaacson’s latest biography is a breakaway hit. Management guru Michael Gelb’s book accessing the thought techniques of history’s most accomplished Renaissance Man — in every literal and figurative sense of the word — is still a bestseller. Almost 500 years after his death, Leonardo da Vinci is still a superstar.
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.
Did you know that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had a published Contingency Plan in anticipation of the current government shutdown? I guess in hindsight, you would have expected it for an agency with 134 facilities dotted across the country. And in fact, it’s required by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under Circular A-11, Section 124 that all government agencies have plans for an orderly shutdown “in the event of an absence of appropriations.”
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.
Choosing the right communication network is crucial to building a successful, smart utility. The quality of the communication technology selected determines whether the data will be transmitted efficiently, securely, and reliably over the long haul. It’s not a decision to be taken lightly.
There are many options for ensuring accurate billing of water used at established industrial customer locations. But how do municipalities or businesses keep track of water availability and use for intermittent applications or movable access points? We spoke with McCrometer, Inc.’s Marc Bennett for insight into how water utilities and industries can efficiently track and allocate water use for billing or internal accounting purposes in such ad hoc applications.
In the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the World Bank held a high-level meeting on recovery and resilience in the Caribbean on October 13, 2017, at its Washington, D.C., headquarters.
The fallout from Flint, Michigan’s lead-contaminated drinking water has been far-flung and long-lasting.
Talk about making waves. Cryptocurrency — digital “tokens” or “coins” rooted in computer code and valued for the very fact that they are disconnected from governments and banks — have experienced spectacular rises and falls in recent months. The crypto-economy is already worth hundreds of billions of dollars (REAL dollars!), and it’s anyone’s guess how fast it will grow after that.
