Small systems face numerous obstacles to treating and delivering
high-quality drinking water. Many small water
providers have never had the financial or operational capability
to solve water quality and compliance problems, and their
customers have often had to put up with poor-quality drinking
water that does not meet regulatory standards.
Central treatment and distribution may not be feasible for
many small systems. Given that <1% of treated water is actually
ingested, treating all of the water in a system to optimal drinking
water specifications does not represent a practical use of
resources, especially in light of increasingly stringent regulations,
higher costs of excess treatment of water that will not be
ingested, water quality deterioration and losses during distribution,
and reduced access to high-quality source water. In a two-tier
system, only the small percentage of water that is consumed
is treated to the highest quality.
The use of bottled water or point-of-use and point-of-entry
approaches in a decentralized, two-tier system represents an
opportunity for small communities to achieve safer and higher-quality
drinking water than they might otherwise have had, more
quickly and at reasonable cost. Although compliance obstacles
must be overcome, applications currently in use are proving to be
successful and are providing data that will help determine future
guidelines for operation, regulation, and compliance. Includes 29 references, tables, figures.
| Edition : | Vol. 95 - No. 4 |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 380 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 14 |
| Published : | 04/01/2003 |
