BEAVER WATER DISTRICT: Officials To Conduct Experiments

STUDY WILL ESTIMATE COST OF COMPLIANCE

By Caleb Fort

Saturday, November 21, 2009

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Bill HagenBurger, plant engineer with the Beaver Water District water treatment plant, shows off the pilot plant Thursday at the plant outside Lowell. The pilot plant is designed to function just like the main plant, but on a much smaller scale to allow easier testing of treatment option.
Photo by Anthony Reyes

BENTONVILLE — A series of experiments will help Beaver Water District officials decide how to comply with coming changes to federal rules.

The study will also estimate how expensive compliance will be.

The rules go into eff ect in 2012. They include stricter standards for the way water providers test for disinfection byproducts, which are created by chemical reactions between chlorine and organic matter in the water.

District oft cials said they don’t know what will be the best way to comply with the rules. To fi nd out they have commissioned a $125,000 study.

The study will use a new pilot plant — with about one ten-thousandth the capacity of the district’s treatment plant — to test options for complying with the new rules.

The district provides water to Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers and Bentonville as well as to some regional water providers.

The pilot plant mimics the treatment process of the district’s actual treatment plant and uses the same raw water from Beaver Lake as the plant, said Bill Hagen-Burger, plant manager.

An important difference is that no one drinks the pilot plant’s fi nished product, opening the treatment process for experimentation, said Larry Lloyd, the district’s chief operating oft cer.

The fi rst series of experiments in the pilot plant will test options for reducing disinfection byproducts.

Studies show certain disinfection byproducts can cause cancer and reproductive and developmental problems in laboratory animals, according to the Environmental Protection Agency Web site. The agency is uncertain whether prolonged exposure to low levels of the chemicals produces the same eff ect in humans, according to the Web site.

The level of byproducts is determined in part by the organic content of the raw water, the treatment process and the length of time the water stays in the system.

The 10-month study will be done by Black and Veatch, a firm that completed an earlier study for the district on disinfection byproducts. Jeff Neemann, assistant director of water treatment technology for Black and Veatch, said last month that there are many options for reducing byproducts, each with advantages and disadvantages.

An example, Lloyd said, would be eliminating prechlorination, the practice of chlorinating water before it gets to the treatment plant.

That would reduce byproducts, but prechlorination is an easy and effective step in the disinfection process.

Or the district could try switching from chlorine to chloramine. Chloramine would drastically reduce the levels of the disinfection byproducts that are subject to the new rules, said Lloyd. Chloramine creates other disinfection byproducts, which may be the subject of future regulation, he said.

“We always say there’s no silver bullet,” he said.

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