Source/Raw Water
Monitoring water quality in reservoirs, lakes, and impoundments before the raw water enters a treatment plant can provide critical data about the health of a water network. Additionally, knowing about your natural water will help you optimally treat it.
Goal: Blue-Green Algae Monitoring in Reservoir
Organization: Center for Applied Aquatic Ecology, NCSU
Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Challenge: Nutrient loading spurs increase of cyanobacteria in water supply. The resulting toxic algal blooms in drinking water reservoirs wreak havoc on water treatment processes.
Solution: Automated vertical profiling stations provide early warning of blooms and direct utility managers where to draw water that is unaffected.
Dollars and $ense:
Predicting algal blooms and switching intakes reduces the amount of (expensive) powdered activated carbon needed during the treatment process. The cost of installing 1 vertical profiling platform can be less expensive than the cost of PAC used in 1 month during the spring (high bloom season).
Cost of 1 YSI fixed vertical profiling platform to withdraw cleaner water is less expensive than the cost of a one-week supply of PAC to treat algal concentrations.
Goal: Chlorophyll Monitoring in Reservoir
Organization: Municipal water division
Location: East Bay area, California
Challenge: Need to monitor and treat surface water collected in several open reservoirs for drinking water distribution.
Solution: Use YSI multiparameter water quality instrument, equipped to measure chlorophyll, to provide advanced notice of change in diatom biomass in reservoirs -- and thus adjust the amount of treatment chemicals needed to keep algae levels in check.
Also, use YSI instruments to monitor dissolved oxygen levels from the top to bottom of the reservoir. Vertical data points help managers decide when to feed liquid oxygen into the lake bottom via a hypolimnatic oxygenating system (HOS).
Dollars and $ense:
The cost of 1 YSI floating vertical profiling platform to monitor withdrawal points for cleaner water is less expensive than the cost of one-week supply of PAC to treat algal concentrations.
Additionally, the cost of 1 YSI floating vertical profiling platform for continuous monitoring saves money when compared to the cost of staff to manually sample reservoirs 2x per week for one year.
Goal: Monitoring Effects of Nutrients in Rivers
Organization: Municipal/city water division
Location: Ohio
Challenge: Deliver safe, potable water to growing customer base by monitoring agricultural run-off at the source and treating water effectively.
Solution: YSI continuous monitoring systems collect data for nitrate, chlorophyll, and dissolved oxygen levels. Lab supervisors can track rapid increases in nitrate that they would have missed with sampling programs. And they can also observe the formation of algal blooms related to atrazine run-off.
Dollars and $ense:
A continuous monitoring system collects real-time chlorophyll and blue-green algae data, which helps managers treat intake water with chemicals more precisely, only while algae levels are elevated.
The cost of 1 YSI floating vertical profiling platform to monitor water is less expensive than the cost of one-week supply of PAC to treat algal concentrations.
Lab manager estimated the cost per day of PAC is $6,000 to 10,000.
