An AquaKleen Installation Resulted in Unsafe, Foul-Tasting Drinking Water

A family in Commerce City, Colorado was awarded nearly $1 in damages as the result of a lawsuit brought against AquaKleen,  a large water treatment company known for its high dollar product line and its aggressive marketing style.

The treatment system in question was a water softener.  The family had complained repeatedly of foul tasting water after the softener’s 2006 installation.  In each instance, SafetyKleen assured them that their water had been tested and that everything was fine.

The source of the bad tasting water was finally discovered by a plumber to be a direct connection of the softener’s  drain into a sewer pipe, allowing sewage to be sucked into the softener and from there to the family’s drinking water.

A short time after the installation, a member of the family was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, which, doctors said, resulted from drinking the contaminated water.

Subsequent inspection by safety officials found all 58 of SafetyKleen’s installations that were inspected  in the area were improperly installed, and 20 of these had cross connections with a sewer pipe.

More Details about the SafetyKleen in Colorado.

New Backwashing Filter Uses Half the Water of Conventional Filters

by Gene Franks

Pure Water Products’ new “Green” design backwashing filter for clean city water dechlorination  uses only half as much water as other backwashing filters in the same category.  The secret is in the use of an advanced tank design which requires less water for backwash plus a modified control valve which cuts standard backwash and rinse times in half.

Here’s the situation.  When manufacturers make products for a broad market, they have to accommodate the “worst case” user.  The Fleck 5600 filter control valve,  the most widely used filter valve made and a traditional favorite because of its low cost, reliable performance, and durability, is used for many filtration purposes.

The Fleck 5600 controls granular activated carbon “whole house”  dechlorination and chemical filters, iron filters for wells, acid neutralizing filters, sand and heavy sediment filters, filters for well-water odor control and more.  The 5600 is a “one size fits all” product and its reliable, simple design has no adjustment for backwash and rinse times.  The manufacturer, therefore, has to make the “default”  backwash time long enough to work effectively for the the most severe and demanding situations.  An iron filter, for example, needs a prolonged backwash and a lengthy rinse to remove iron that has built up in its media bed.  The manufacturer, therefore, provides a 15-minute backwash to keep iron filters clean,  plus an extended rinse to settle and reform the heavy filter bed. The long backwash and rinse cycles are necessary and appropriate for iron filters and dense multi-media sediment filters.  They are much longer than needed, however, for regeneration of a carbon filter running on clean city water.

The city water filter needs little backwash time to fluff the relatively light carbon bed and wash away the small amounts of particulate that might have collected.

With that in mind,  Pure Water Products has created standard 5600 backwashing filters that use a specially made “low water” version of the 5600 control that cuts the backwash and rinse times in half.  This “green” version of our filter is used only on standard carbon and Centaur carbon filters that are intended for use with clean city water.

In addition to the low water control valve, these units use the water saving “Vortech” mineral tank that eliminates the need for gravel underbedding and requires significantly less regeneration water.  The use of the advanced Vortech tank allows us to reduce the backwash stream by a full 20%,  which is in addition to the half-as-long backwash and rinse cycles.

This is a product that’s long overdue.  We’re proud to have it now, ready for immediate shipment, on our main website.  See products BW570 and BW571 on our 5600 backwashing filter page.

If the plant were to fail during the storm, “the result would be catastrophic.”

The huge storm coming into the east coast this week poses a major threat to aging wastewater treatment plants like the one in Cheshire, CT according to The Cheshire Citizen.

The plant is tucked behind athletic fields, but it is vitally important to the town as it treats waste from 120 miles of sewer mains.  The Cheshire plant was built in 1971 and received an upgrade in 1991.

The plant will have to process wastewater  from a large drainage area. Heavy rains may create a massive overload on the 40-year-old system, which is sorely in need of a major overhaul.

Rain from the heavy storms will bring in wastewater and runoff water that will need to be cleaned at the plant.  Dennis Dievert, plant supervisor, said the results “would be catastrophic. We can’t stop waste from coming in here.”

The situation in Cheshire is not unique.  As infrastructures age nationwide and “no new taxes” sentiment freezes funding that would let local governments make improvements,  public health and welfare are at risk. One of the ironies of our time is that Americans don’t blink at billions spent to bomb foreign cities to “make us safe,” but are very stingy when it comes to spending a few dollars on their own safety and well-being at home.

In the case of Cheshire, the situation is dire.

“If the plant (doesn’t) operate, we will have a major public health calamity,” said Town Manager Michael Milone.

Milone said if the plant fails, huge fines by the state would be secondary to “raw sewage flowing into the Quinnipiac River and backing up into sections of town.”

The city has a $31.15 million referendum for upgrade of the aging plant on the ballot for November 6.

Read the entire article in the  Cheshire Citizen.

Editor’s Note:  As feared, this facility and others in the area were indeed forced to dump millions of gallons of raw sewage because of the overload of wastewater from the hurricane.   Go here for details.

Students Aren’t As Dumb as Nestle and Coca Cola Think

by Hardly Waite

Water filtration systems are becoming increasingly popular among some university students, according to Nick Hennessy,  sustainability coordinator at Ohio’s University of Bowling Green.

Hennesy said some students are choosing to use water filters because they are a more affordable option. There is an obvious cost difference between filtered water and bottled water, Hennessy said.

“If you drink a minimum of eight glasses of water a day, the cost with a Brita filter would be 49 cents per year, not including the cost of the filters,” Hennessy said. “The same amount of water in bottles would be $1,500 for the year.”

Another university official, Rachel Weber, who was in favor of the switch to filtered water because of the environmental consequences of bottled water, said, “I would like to think it’s because they want to be green, but it’s probably just because it’s cheaper.”

Whatever the reason for the switch to filtered water, Brita may not be a good choice as an economical alternative.  Mr. Hennessy’s 49 cents per year cost is without the cost of replacement filters, which can be considerable.  When compared with full-fledged, serious countertop filters that have much larger and more durable, and more effective filtration elements, small units like Brita are much more expensive to operate.

Products like Brita are marketed with much the same strategy as razors.  The razor itself is very cheap because it creates a long-term customer for the company’s razor blades, which aren’t such a bargain.

Larger units cost a bit more up front, but replacements last longer and cost less.  With a Pure Water Products Model 77 countertop,  for example, the initial cost of the lifetime-guaranteed filtration unit is $77,  but the annual upkeep with the standard cartridge is only $21–a fraction of the upkeep cost of the Brita.

According to water treatment specialist Craig Welch of Pure Water Products, “With a full-sized countertop unit like Model 77,  you have many filter replacement cartridges to choose from so you can customize the unit to your taste preferences and to the condition of your local water.  With the tiny retail store pour-through units,  it’s one  size fits all.”

Reference:

Some University students, faculty favor filtration systems over bottled water.

Model 77

 

 

 

 

How to decide what size whole house filter you need.

by Pure Water Annie

More good advice from the Pure Water Occasional  Technical Department

 

One of the critical factors in determining the size of a “whole house” water treatment system, whether you’re removing iron from well water or chemicals from city water, is the rate of service flow you need. To work effectively, the filter must be large enough to handle the volume of water, in gallons per minute, that you plan to run through it.

Here’s a chart that will help you take an educated guess at how much water you would expect to use. The numbers are based on Annie’s years of experience in water treatment and some clever theft from other sources.

Number of Residents	1-2 Bathrooms	2-3 Bathrooms	3-4 Bathrooms	4-5 Bathrooms
1-2	5 GPM	7 GPM	10 GPM	12 GPM
2-4	7 GPM	10 GPM	12 GPM	14 GPM
5-6	10 GPM	12 GPM	14 GPM	18 GPM
7-8	10 GPM	12 GPM	14 GPM	18 GPM
9-10	12 GPM	14 GPM	18 GPM	20 GPM

GPM means Gallons Per Minute of Service Flow.

This chart is intended as a suggestion only. The nature of the building and the individuals who live there must be taken into consideration. It is intended for use in sizing for standard residential dwellings. Mansion dwellers must look elsewhere for advice.

Stainless Steel Watts Residential Units Added to Pure Water Products UV Offerings

by Hardly Waite

Pure Water Products announced today that the company is adding Watts stainless steel residential ultraviolet (UV) systems to its product offerings.

After a two year trial period of selling and supporting the Watts units, the company today began offering the Watts units on its main webpage.

Pure Water Products now stocks all models and all parts of the Watts units for same-day shipment.

According to General Manager Katey Shannon,  “UV is our best commercial product.  We’ve been selling UV units since 1990.  Adding the stainless steel Watts units to our popular line of plastic Pura units gives us a powerful, high output UV system that’s simple to install and maintain yet inexpensive to purchase.   Since we are predominantly online sellers,  we like products that are tough and effective yet simple enough for non-professionals to install and service.  We’ve given the Watts systems a good test and we really like them.”

Watts UV units come in popular residential sizes from two to twelve gallons per minute with pipe sizes of 1/2″ (2 gpm unit), 3/4″ (6 and 8 gpm units) and 1″ (12 gpm unit).   Even the largest unit is priced under $500.

Pages to visit:

Watts UV Spec Sheet (PDF)

Watts Ultraviolet Disinfection Systems

Aging Sewage Systems Are Crumbling While Cities Look for Money to Replace Them

Many US cities are facing expensive replacement of ancient sewer lines at a time when money is hard to find in the budget.

A good example is Rock Hill, SC,  where one-hundred-year-old clay sewer pipes have been ignored and neglected for years. The pipes once carried about one million gallons of dirty water a day from a finishing plant to a lagoon.  The lagoon is now a soccer field, but the leaky clay pipe is still in place.

In the 1920s and 1930s, adjoining sewer lines were put in to serve the growing residential areas,  but the city has had to deal with cracks in the clay pipes and repair complications because parts of the original lines were laid in the back yards of some homes.

New sewer lines are being moved under roads and in the public right-of-way and will relieve some stress on the city’s wastewater treatment plant.

Abandoning the old clay sewer lines, filling them with concrete and installing new iron pipes should stop rainwater from entering the sewage system.

The problem with rainwater entering the pipes is that it then goes on to the treatment plant and adds greatly to the wastewater treatment load.

Rock Hill’s wastewater plant processes almost 9 million gallons a day from homes and businesses in the city and from adjoining areas.

The $889,524 sewer line replacement project started in late September and is on track to be finished by the end of 2012.

The good news is that the entire project is being paid for, without borrowing, by a modest increase in utility rates that began in 2007. The city also has budgeted $1.42 million this year for major infrastructure improvements. Recent utility rate increases also will help pay off future loans when the city borrows money to expand its wastewater treatment plant. The expansion could cost about $60 million, and more plant capacity will be needed as soon as 2017 or 2018.

The “pay as you go” system financed by modest increases in utility rates has allowed the city to keep its infrastructure sound without creating crippling debts.

The EPA’s UCMR Program

 

The EPA is a much busier agency than most people think.

In addition to looking after currently regulated drinking water contaminants through its familiar list of MCLs,  the EPA maintains a Contaminant Candidate List (CCL) comprised of other contaminants that may be subject to future regulation.  The public is not so aware of the CCL.

CCL-listed contaminants include those that have been found in drinking water at Public Water Supplies (PWSs),  or others that have been identified through EPA research.  Contaminants on the list are prioritized based on their potential health risk to humans,  as assessed by the EPA’s Office of Water’s Office of Science and Technology.

In other words, the CCL list consists of currently unregulated contaminants and the purpose of monitoring is to determine if further regulation is appropriate.

Now (to make this a bit more confusing with yet another acronym), the CCL is managed under  an EPA program known as its Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring program (UCMR) .

The UCMR program requires the EPA to issue a list every five years of not more than 30 currently unregulated contaminants to be monitored by PWSs.

The new list is actually the third issued since the program’s inception.  UCMR 3 , initiated in April 2012,  will monitor 30 new additional contaminants (28 chemicals and two viruses) during the period from 2013 to 2015.

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Assessment Monitoring (List 1 Contaminants)

Under UCMR3,  all PWSs serving more than 10,000 people, along with 800 EPA-selected PWSs serving 10,000 or fewer people, will be required to monitor 21 separate contaminants. The contaminant list includes seven different volatile organic compounds, six different metals, six perfluorinated compounds, one synthetic organic compound and one oxyhalide anion.  Specific List 1 contaminants to be monitored include some familiar names and some that are not so familiar:

• 1,2,3 — trichloropropane

• 1,3 — butadiene

• chloromethane (methyl chloride)

• 1,1 — dichloroethane

• bromomethane (methyl bromide)

• chlorodifluoromethane (HCFC—22)

• bromochloromethane (halon 1011)

• 1,4 — dioxane

• vanadium

• molybdenum

• cobalt

• chromium

• chromium-6

• chlorate

• perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS)

• perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)

• perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA)

• perfluorohexanesulfonic acid (PFHxS)

• perfluoroheptanoic acid (PFHpA)

• perfluorobutanesulfonic acid (PFBS)

• strontium

For the full report on the additional complexities of UCMR3.

How Such Diverse Factors as the Japanese Tsunami and EPA Flue Gas Emissions Rules Affect the Price of Your Water Filter Cartridge

Filter carbon, the most universally used component of modern water treatment,  is a manufactured product.

The main raw source materials are coal (lignite,  sub-bituminous,  bituminous,  and anthracite), coconut shell charcoal,  and wood (softwood,  hardwood,  and bamboo).  Most carbons used in water filters are made of either coal or coconut shell,  largely because with these materials most of the raw material is usable,  the ratio of raw material to finished product being close to 3 to 1.  Other source materials are not so efficient.  Nevertheless,  filter carbon can also be made from peat, olive pits, fruit nut shells, palm shells, pecan shells, and macadamia nut shells.  Some lesser materials are used in niche markets.  Eucalyptus carbon, for example, is a very porous carbon that works well with tannin treatment,  but it is now in short supply because it also performs well for olive oil producers.

The raw  materials used to manufacture activated carbon are subject to the same global marketing laws of supply and demand that cause price fluctuations in other products. The Japanese, immediately after the March 2011 tsunami, realized that because of radioactive fallout resulting from their nuclear accident they would need huge amounts of activated carbon for the cleanup.  Other countries also realized that carbon would be needed to clean up their reservoirs affected by the fallout.  Consequently, thousands of metric tons of activated carbons were purchased in addition to regular demand, depleting manufacturers’ stocks and driving prices up worldwide.

Similarly, the EPA’s tightening of the rules governing mercury in flue gas emissions at coal-fired power plants is expected to create a market for an additional 500 to 800 million tons of powdered activated carbon.  Other factors that affect the carbon market are import duties, EPA regulations (a new disinfection by-product rule scheduled to go into effect in 2013 will likely make city water departments much better carbon customers), and the world economy in general.

Reference: Ken Schaeffer, “The Activated Carbon Market,” Water Conditioning and Purification, June, 2012.

San Francisco Water Recycling Plant Is Capable of Putting Out 2.8 Million Gallons of Recycled Water Per Day

The state of California gave approval for irrigation of the golf course at TPC Harding Park with recycled water.  To now, the 175-acre course has been irrigated with water from the Hetch Hetchy system — the same water that is delivered to households and businesses for consumption by people.

Other golf courses in the city are already irrigated with recycled water.  The North San Mateo County Sanitation District in 2003 built a new facility to produce recycled water.  The facility can produce up to 2.8 million gallons of non-potable water per day, but there has been a demand for only about 1,000,000 gallons per day.

In supporting the recycling project, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission stated: “California has been safely using treated recycled water since 1929. There has not been one confirmed case of anyone becoming ill from the proper use of recycled water for landscape irrigation, commercial, municipal or industrial uses.”

is a regional water system,” he said of using water recycled in Daly City.

The SFPUC also is in the planning stages of other recycled water projects, including a wastewater recycling facility near Ocean Beach at the Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Plant and another on the east side of The City at a location that has yet to be determined.

“It is the first in a long line of recycled water projects in The City,” Jue said of the Harding Park project.

According to an SFPUC document about the Harding Park project, “California has been safely using treated recycled water since 1929. There has not been one confirmed case of anyone becoming ill from the proper use of recycled water for landscape irrigation, commercial, municipal or industrial uses.”

San Francisco’s action follows a national trend to find alternative sources of irrigation water for golf courses.  The average golf course uses about 10,ooo gallons of water per day.  More than 2.5 billion gallons of water are used every day to irrigate golf courses worldwide.