BC Environmental and Occupational Health Research Network

The objective of this research is to evaluate existing QSPRs for predicting kinetic rate constants by chlorine, chlorine dioxide, chloramine, ozone, and AOP disinfection processes, membrane rejection parameters, and activated-carbon adsorption partitioning coefficients. QSPR techniques can be used in process models to predict the behavior of emerging contaminants during various conventional and advanced drinking water treatment processes.

The project objectives include: • Identify and describe a range of supplemental services that could provide enhanced customer service while providing either increased revenue or an offset in operational costs. • Provide case studies of utilities that provide supplemental services to identify drivers, barriers, critical success factors, customer perceptions, and costs and benefits of the programs. • Identify the economic, environmental, and social costs and benefits of selected water utility supplemental services.

The objective of the project will be to: • Provide utility managers with information that can be taken to decision makers and stakeholders to receive support for the development of proactive water conservation programs • Perform and document case studies of conservation programs presently used by a variety of utilities through out the US and world. • Identify unintended consequences experienced by utilities implementing conservation programs in both the short and long term. • Provide decision makers with best practices used to prevent revenue short falls and other unintended consequences. • Provide concrete guidance to managers to aid in the design and implementation of conservation programs that will address issues of utility finance, resource planning, and water quality impacts.

Objective: Since the promulgation of the D/DBP Rule and the Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule, many surface-water plants are using chloramines for post-disinfection with primary disinfection from a stronger oxidant (chlorine, chlorine dioxide or ozone). However, an emerging concern with the use of chloramines is the formation of nitrosamines. Of all nitrosamines, N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) has received most of the attention. Recent research is showing that pretreatment with chlorine, chlorine dioxide or ozone can destroy or transform some of the NDMA precursors.
This project would develop a bench-scale test protocol to determine the formation of both nitrosamines and regulated disinfection by-products (DBPs) for a wide range of drinking water qualities under conditions that are representative of typical distribution systems. The protocol will then be used for a range of waters to evaluate the formation and control of nitrosamines while minimizing the formation of regulated DBPs for various pre-oxidation configurations at typical CT levels.

Historically, distribution system water quality monitoring has been used to simply maintain water quality within given parameters. For this application, a high-and-low alarm setting for individual distribution system monitors is sufficient to give operators notice when water quality is approaching unacceptable levels. However, with ever present threat of water contamination through cross connections, backflow, or intentional activities, the objectives of the monitoring has moved towards being able to detect and identify water quality abnormalities that cannot be explained by incidents at the plant or by hydraulic events such as operation of a tank or valves.
The proposed research project should develop an event detection system that will retrieve water quality and operating data from a SCADA system and use some type of advanced correlation techniques, statistical analyses, clustering techniques, and/or other algorithms to examine these data, compare them with predictions based on historical utility data, and output a system status indicator which can alert a system operator to a potential problem.
The project would develop a universal and reliable framework for interpreting real-time online monitoring data by examining and correlating existing sensor and hydraulic data as well as operational information to identify water quality abnormalities and minimize false alarms.

Effective source water protection (SWP) programs consider multiple water and land use management goals (e.g., public health protection, ecosystem protection, competing uses, etc.) and typically require extensive collaboration with related stakeholders (e.g., agriculture, industry, municipal wastewater managers, stormwater managers, etc.). Because SWP is largely a voluntary action with little or no regulatory mechanisms for enforcing source water management practices, SWP programs must succeed on their own merits from practical, political, and economic standpoints. Water resource managers faced with tight operating budgets and competing demands for financial and human resources need access to the full range of costs and benefits for specific practices before developing a SWP plan or program. Compounding this challenge are two prominent factors: (1) Source water protection is inherently site-specific, and (2) Best Management Practices (BMPs) that are successful in one situation may not be practical or appropriate in another situation. A web-enabled tool that provides a high level “road map” that can orient a SWP novice to the different types of BMPs and organizational approaches that may be more or less appropriate for a given situation, and a tool that estimates the full range of site-specific costs and benefits for those source water protection practices will be valuable for water resource managers and other watershed stakeholders.This research will develop a user-friendly, web-enabled tool for water resource managers and other watershed stakeholders to estimate the triple bottom line (i.e. economic, social and environmental) costs and benefits of specific source water protection practices.

The drinking water industry is capital intensive, with the majority of that capital being buried pipes, valves, etc., associated with the distribution system. The maintenance and repair of buried infrastructure is becoming increasingly important due to concerns associated with the potential health, economic and societal impacts of infrastructure failure. In addition, infrastructure location and leak detection technologies that were the topic of research only a few years ago are now more evolved, available, and affordable. Many small systems have limited resources to apply to pipe location and leakage management, resulting in added costs and/or wasted water. While considerable research and application experience has been gained in the last few years on pipe locating and leak detecting technology, this information has not been presented in a manner specifically framed for use by small systems. Furthermore, some emerging technologies and improved practices may be particularly effective for small systems. This project focuses on determining which pipe location and leakage management technologies are most applicable for small systems and how that information can be transferred to small system operators effectively. This research will produce a technical guidance manual, along with recommendations for outreach that will assist small system operators to locate buried pipe and manage water leakage more effectively. The project findings will be synthesized from existing research results and case studies.