Stockholm Junior Water Prize Winners Propose Novel Approach to Expanding Safe Water Resources

Striving for a better world by 2030, countries around the globe are beginning to incorporate the new, ambitious UN Sustainable Development Goals into their national agendas. Among the 17 bold goals, which include ending poverty and hunger, is the goal of universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation. This goal was front and center at last week’s Stockholm


Touring Orange County’s Groundwater Replenishment System and Celebrating World Water Week 2017

The theme of this year’s World Water Week, which runs from August 27 to September 1, is “Water and Waste: Reduce and Reuse.” World Water Week was established in 1991 and is organized each year by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI). To mark World Water Week, we thought it only fitting to share a highlight


Finished Drinking Water and Treatment Fundamentals

Drinking water has been called the 2nd most essential human need (after the air we breathe). Every day, over 50,000 community drinking water systems serve over 300 million Americans, with just 3 percent of these systems serving almost 80 percent of the US population.1,2 Regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, and supported by the


Chlorine Odors and Why Drinking Water Systems Change Disinfection Practices

Earlier this year, I wrote an article called “Smells Like Chlorine” that discussed the chemistry of odors that can arise from chlorine and other chlorine-based substances in drinking water and in poorly maintained swimming pools. Other WQ&HC articles have focused specifically on drinking water and chlorine smell, why some individuals are more sensitive than others,


A Public Health Anniversary: US Drinking Water Chlorination

Monday, September 26, 2016, marks the 108th anniversary of the first continuous use of chlorine to disinfect a public drinking water supply in the US.  Do you know which American city debuted chlorinated drinking water in the fall of 1908?  Can you imagine the relief of local public health officials when typhoid fever death rates


Why Wastewater Treatment Matters: An Example from Haiti

One of the most important functions of water infrastructure is to prevent the contamination of water that may be used for drinking or recreation.  Limiting human exposure to wastewater helps protect human health by shielding people from the pathogens shed in feces.  Whereas diseases such as cholera and typhoid fever—transmitted through contaminated drinking water and


Activated Carbon and Water Treatment

Drinking water treatment facilities employ a host of technologies to convert “raw” water from rivers, lakes and underground sources into safe, potable water.  At the treatment plant, these technologies are applied in a particular order, known as a “treatment train,” to produce water of optimum quality for the consumer.  This article focuses on one of


Marking World Water Day with an Interview with Drinking Water Treatment Professionals

Louisville Water treatment plant on the Ohio River, Louisville, Kentucky [photo courtesy of Louisville Water] Every year on March 22, the United Nations observes World Water Day with a unique theme.  Intrigued with this year’s “Water and Jobs” theme, we conducted a telephone interview with four water treatment professionals employed by the Louisville Water Company. 


Facts about Chloramine Drinking Water Treatment

One in five Americans drink water disinfected with chloramine, a technology that has been in use since the early decades of the 20th century.  Chloramine is produced at water treatment plants by combining chlorine and ammonia. Cities that treat water with chloramine include Denver (since 1918), Portland (since 1929) and Boston (since the 1930s), among


Keeping the Lead out of Drinking Water

The recent lead in drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan raises questions about the role of water distribution infrastructure in altering the quality of water delivered to consumers.  In Flint, lead was leached from the water distribution system after the city changed from the Detroit Water System, which takes water from Lake Huron, to the