IN THE NEWS

It seems like it should be a simple problem to solve: Increase your total organic carbon (TOC) removal, decrease your dangerous DBPs, meet all federal and state water standards. But in practice, it's anything but simple. The Environmental Protection Agency requires...

With headlines around the country this year about lead in drinking water, people are worried. They want to know if there’s a metallic taste in their water, do they need to be concerned about lead? Or can they smell lead? What if their water has taste and odor...

The Stage 2 rules for disinfection byproducts are expected to prevent approximately 280 bladder cancer cases per year in the United States, 26 percent of which would have been fatal. The annual cost savings of fewer cancer cases is estimated between $763 million and...

You can wait until blue-green sludge washes ashore. Or when a dense algae mat appears in the water. Or when you have to close a lake or reservoir, and tell irrigation users that the water is dangerous. But you'd be better off doing something about it now. Still in the...

Spoiler alert: Not all algaecides are created equal. In summer 2016 a cyanobacterial algal bloom popped up in a Utah reservoir. As a result, city officials closed the popular recreation spot. Residents worried that water officials would close their favorite watering...

Bactericidal products are your best defense against toxic algae. Last year there were unprecedented numbers of cyanobacteria outbreaks around the Western U.S. So this year, Utah water officials are gearing up early for toxic algae season. They've asked for two new...

Algae Outbreak on the Way in 2017 For the past several years algae has begun to grow at records levels, closing beaches, lakes, reservoirs, and all types of public and private waterways. With the influx of rain and snow this year and continuing warmer temperatures,...

One day it was a beautiful lake in Northern California, open to swimming—the next day it was covered with a toxic algal bloom. In 2016, toxic algal blooms popped up in more than 40 waterways across California. The toxic blue-green slime isn't a new phenomenon, but the...

About a hundred years ago, the development of pre-chlorination and disinfection of water led to the end of epidemics of waterborne diseases. People in the U.S. with access to treated water no longer had to worry about deadly typhoid and cholera. But disinfection has...

Two treatment plants needed to reduce their total organic carbon (TOC) levels. They were both located in the same city—Birmingham, Alabama—and treated water from the same general area. But their total organic carbon situations were different, so they each required...

Are Your Customers Complaining About Water Stains? Abby’s water is staining her sinks, and she's getting strange spots on her laundered clothes. When she tried to clean the sinks with bleach, the stains got worse. Her problem? Manganese and iron in her water. Iron and...

TriHalomethanes Can Cause a Public Relations Nightmare A water system in the Midwest exceeded the EPA's total trihalomethanes (TTHMs) limit and had to issue a public notice of the violation. Local news stations picked up the story, and water system managers and...

Is a Serious Drinking Water Violation About To Hit Your Municipality? In August 2015, the city of Baltimore sent out a press release detailing an EPA violation for higher than maximum allowable levels of haloacetic acids (HAA5) above the maximum allowable limit in the...

The emergence of chlorinating drinking water over a century ago, is widely determined as one of the “most significant public health advances of the millennium.” Through chlorination of water, “life expectancy has been increased by 30 years since 1900,” infectious...

Treating Algae Blooms with Copper Sulfate Algae is one of the most common, and annoying, problems faced by water treatment plants and wastewater treatment plants. It’s a problem that requires swift action to ensure that it does not affect production or release toxins...

Safe, clean, pure, clear? All words that should describe the culinary water that comes out of every faucet in the U.S. But that's not always the case because of disinfection byproducts, even though the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulates the safety of the...

Since 1774 when Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovered chlorine, scientists have been experimenting with the chemical element. Around the time of World War I, researchers discovered that injecting salt water with electrical current resulted in sodium...

True story: A water treatment plant manager called us to evaluate his facility, determine if there were better chemicals and protocols, and find ways to save money. After getting our report, he was a little reluctant to implement our plan because of the cost. But he...

Your average consumer doesn't want to hear about what goes on at their local wastewater treatment plant. They don't want to hear details of what happens after they flush the toilet or shut off the sink. They don't care what a flocculants are used or what a polymer...