WATER INDUSTRY FEATURES, INSIGHTS, AND ANALYSIS

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    PFAS Contamination At Airports Is A Rising Concern

    When aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF, was introduced 50 years ago, its effectiveness at firefighting made it popular with emergency personnel at airports and military bases. Chemical compounds called perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) found in AFFF repelled both oil and water and smothered the flames quickly. AFFF created a foam blanket that put out fires and provided additional protection by suppressing fuel vapors and preventing reignition. Its use quickly spread, not just to put out fires but in equipment testing, training exercises, and during fuel spills as a preventative measure.

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    11,000 Liters Of Water To Make One Liter Of Milk? New Questions About The Freshwater Impact Of NZ Dairy Farming

    Water scarcity and water pollution are increasingly critical global issues. Water scarcity is driven not only by shortages of water, but also by rendering water unusable through pollution. Over the past few decades, nutrient and sediment emissions into waterways have increased, driven by agricultural and horticultural intensification.

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    How Prevalent And Dangerous Is Pesticide Contamination?

    Add pesticides to the list of contaminants that are prevalent in U.S. drinking water and can cause severe health impacts, including cancer and Parkinson’s disease.

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    Calling On Utilities To Combat Legionella

    The risk level linked to delivered drinking water from municipal utilities is very small, even if some high-profile examples of failure (see Flint, MI) have degraded public confidence to a degree. Our treatment professionals usually hit their targets, so the onus then shifts to the research and guidance that determines the safe level of various constituents through U.S. EPA protocols. But there is one contaminant that rulemaking hasn’t quite caught up to and which is downright deadly — Legionella pneumophila.

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    Taking The "Forever" Out Of PFAS: The Future Of PFAS Remediation

    As PFAS treatment technologies continue to emerge, CDM Smith reviews some considerations for the existing options — and introduces a new one.

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    Restoring A Unique Area In Northwest Indiana

    Although discharges of toxic substances into the Great Lakes have been reduced over the last 50 years, high concentrations of contaminated sediment remain in the bottom of some rivers and harbors. These contaminants pose potential health risks to people and wildlife, and states have issued fish advisories in many Great Lakes locations.

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    Multidistrict Litigation Suit For PFAS Contamination Gains Momentum

    Water system providers across the U.S. have joined a multidistrict litigation (MDL) suit claiming that their water supplies are contaminated with per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF). These chemicals have been used for decades to extinguish chemical or petroleum fires at military bases, airports, and industrial facilities. 

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    Mini Superstars For Aquatic Research: Stable Isotopes

    Monitoring the nation’s water quality is a fundamental part of EPA’s work. As part of the Clean Water Act, EPA monitors the condition of U.S. waters through a program called the National Aquatic Resource Surveys (NARS). This is a collaborative program between EPA, states, and Tribes designed to assess the quality of the nation's coastal waters, lakes, reservoirs, rivers, streams and wetlands.

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    EPA Researchers Develop Tool That Helps Water Quality Managers Meet Nutrient Load Targets

    Nutrient pollution is one of America’s most widespread, costly, and challenging environmental problems. This pollution can occur when excess amounts of nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, run off from land into streams, rivers, lakes, and other water sources. To help water quality managers reduce nutrient pollution, EPA researchers developed the River Basin Export Reduction Optimization Support Tool (RBEROST), a regional online tool currently available for the Upper Connecticut River Basin that provides low-cost solutions to meet nutrient load targets.

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    EPA Researchers Explore Technology To Destroy PFAS

    Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, otherwise known as PFAS, are a large group of human-made organic compounds with properties that make many of them toxic and persistent in the environment. PFAS have been manufactured and used since the 1940s in items such as fire-fighting foams, adhesives, cosmetics, paper products, and stain and water repellants. Until now, researchers have been unable to destroy PFAS in a way that has potential for larger scale use. 

DRINKING WATER PRODUCTS

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PFAS Reference Materials

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are man-made chemicals that have been used in industry and consumer products worldwide since the 1950s.
PFAS can be found in:

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Real-Time Water Quality Data For Agriculture

We arm farmers with mission-critical water data to help enhance crop yield and taste. KETOS delivers valuable insights for fluctuations in deficiency and toxicity.

TrojanUVFlex -- Water Reuse & Drinking Water Disinfection System
TrojanUVFlex

TrojanUV systems are installed for water providers who are adopting wastewater reuse to conserve natural drinking water supplies. 

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Desalination Technology

Aquatech can supply ANY technology that is available in the world today to tackle desalination issues

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DE NORA TETRA™ Modular Deepbed™ Filter Modular Packaged Filtration Plant

The DE NORA TETRA™ Modular DeepBed Filter Plant from De Nora Water Technologies is designed as a competitive filtration plant for tertiary effluent from small to medium size sewage works. The Modular DeepBed Filter utilizes the technology of DeepBed filtration that has made the TETRA filter such a successful tertiary treatment process over many years in Europe and the United States.

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PFAS HPLC Column

The new Ascentis® Express PFAS HPLC column, with its Fused-Core technology and a particle size of 2.7 μm, delivers fast and high-resolution separations with excellent selectivity, peak shape, and necessary retention to perform in EPA methods 537.1, 533 and 8327.

VIEWS ON THE LATEST REGS

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Calling On Utilities To Combat Legionella
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    [AUDIO] Helping The Water Sector Advocate For Itself with Mae Stevens, VP and Chair of Water Practice, Signal Group DC

    The Federal government plays a significant role in water project development, through both funding and regulating the industry. Water sector champion Mae Stevens shares how we as water professionals need to play an important role in influencing our congressional representatives and senators to win support of what we need to advance business opportunities.  

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    Water Industry Responds To Proposed LCR Revisions

    With more than 50,000 community water systems (CWS) in the U.S., it is amazing that only 285 individuals had logged public comments on the U.S. EPA’s proposed Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) Revisions by the February 12, 2020 deadline. Yet, what those respondents had to say could have a big impact on how we deal with lead in drinking water moving forward. Here is a cross-section of the industry’s response.

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    LCR Revisions: Speak Now, Or Forever Hold Your Peace

    Are you completely ready to implement the scores of changes in the U.S. EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule Revisions (LCRR), exactly as proposed? If not, act quickly, because time to register constructive feedback before the February 12th deadline is running out. Less than three weeks before the end of the comment period, the EPA’s webpage for feedback displayed only 131 public submissions regarding the proposed regulations.

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    Understanding PFAS’ Impact On Remediation Strategies

    For more than 16.5 million water-utility customers in 33 different states, contamination caused by per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) is a source-water issue that will not go away for a long time. What are the practical options for community water systems currently confronting this challenge? Here is an overview of several treatments and their relative successes against a wide variety of PFAS compounds.

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    Preparing To Tackle The Hydra Of LCR Revisions

    As a journalist serving the water industry — but not yet a seasoned technical veteran — I attended a recent Lead In Drinking Water Forum sponsored by AWWA NJ to learn about the challenges of complying with the proposed Lead and Copper Rule Revisions (LCRR). What I heard impressed upon me the technical, administrative, and logistical challenges of delivering safe, lead-free drinking water all the way to user taps. Here are my takeaways.

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