The US Environmental Protection
Agency's (USEPA's) new arsenic (As)
standard of 10 ug/L is expected to
affect 5% of community water systems
(CWSs), but 77% of these CWSs serve
1,500 or fewer customers. Point-of-use
(POU) treatment, recently approved by
USEPA for permanently complying with
drinking water standards, may be an economical
alternative to As removal by centralized
treatment for these smaller CWSs. Lack
of guidance from USEPA regarding design of
POU treatment programs and how to ensure
compliance with federal regulations has
resulted in few CWSs implementing POU
treatment programs. Thus, the costs and
logistical difficulties involved are not well
documented.
This study describes three (base-case,
high-cost, and low-cost) POU scenarios to
treat drinking water to meet the 10-ug/L As
standard and calculates the per-household
cost for each one. These per-household
costs were compared with those of the least expensive
centralized treatment methods for
removing As presented in published studies.
The authors found that POU treatment
costs varied significantly with the monitoring
and maintenance schedule adopted by
the CWS; annual As monitoring of each
POU device coupled with frequent maintenance
and filter replacement increased the
POU costs to the point at which centralized
treatment was more cost-effective. The published
costs of centralized treatment, however,
also varied significantly, and these
discrepancies may mask the economic
advantage of POU treatment.
The results of this study point out the
difficulties in designing and running a POU
treatment program. For a POU program to
be successful, CWSs must get cooperation
from their customers. This may discourage
CWSs from implementing POU treatment,
even when centralized treatment is not feasible.
In these cases, the authors suggest providing
bottled water to customers as a temporary
compliance measure. Includes 24 references, tables, figures.
| Edition : | Vol. 94 - No. 3 |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 360 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 8 |
| Published : | 03/01/2002 |
