Environmental Science & Engineering - www.esemag.com - September 2004
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Environmental News Items, September 2004

US chooses Canadian membrane technology

In the United States, new, more stringent water treatment and disinfection rules are set to come into effect January 2005 to improve control over microbial pathogens. The City of Lancaster and the Authority of the Borough of Charleroi undertook extensive evaluations comparing membrane technology to conventional, particularly because they both had surface water as the source. Parasites such as Cryptosporidium and Giardia are quite common in surface water and Cryptosporidium is also highly resistant to chemical disinfectants.

The two plants for the City of Lancaster were aging and needed significant upgrades. After an aggressive piloting program with different technologies, they chose ZENON membranes to relieve concerns with respect to water quality compliance and to protect their residents from any possible microbial contamination.

The City’s Conestoga Water Treatment Plant currently treats 12 MGD (45,420 m³/d) and the Susquehanna Water Treatment Plant currently treats 24 MGD (90,840 m³/d). In order to continue servicing its communities, both conventional plants will operate until the beginning of 2007 when the membrane plants will be set for completion.

The Authority of the Borough of Charleroi had similar concerns in meeting future water quality regulations with their existing conventional water treatment plant. After pilot testing pressure membranes vs. vacuum driven membranes, ZENON’s UF (vacuum driven) membranes were selected.

City of Red Deer brings new clarifiers onstream

Two new clarifiers have been brought into production at the City of Red Deer Water Treatment Plant. These two units will be capable of producing more than 120 million litres of clarified water per day, an increase of 80 percent in capacity from the old clarifiers.

In July 2003, the City began constructing the clarification system, supplied by John Meunier Inc. of Montreal. This new system uses sandballasted floc technology to improve water clarity and increase treatment capacity. These clarifiers were entirely built inside one of the old clarifiers, therefore eliminating the need for a costly building expansion. They allow the City to increase the amount of water it can treat in order to serve Red Deer's growing population and prepare for future growth and regional needs. The upgrade will also help further enhance water quality, which already meets Alberta Environment Standards and Canadian Drinking Water Guidelines.

The City of Red Deer is located in the heart of Alberta's beautiful parkland and midway between the two major cities of Calgary and Edmonton. The City of Red Deer has a population of 76,000.

The Red Deer water treatment plant draws water from the Red Deer River. Because of high turbidity and organics in the river water during times of spring run-off, the City was sometimes forced to reduce capacity to preserve drinking water quality.

Thunder Bay upgrades water treatment systems

The City of Thunder Bay, Ontario will be building a new drinking water plant that will treat 30 million gallons (MGD) of water per day, or 113,550 m³/day.

Thunder Bay, the largest city in North Western Ontario, had a wake up call in 1997 when part of the City (Thunder Bay South) was placed under a ‘boil water’ advisory as a result of Giardia contamination in the drinking water supply (from Loch Lomond, an inland lake). ZENON quickly built and delivered an interim membrane based water treatment plant treating approximately 10 MGD (37,850 m³/day). Currently, the City operates two drinking water plants - one using membranes (Loch Lomond) and the other (Bare Point) using conventional direct filtration technology.

By the end of 2005, the City of Thunder Bay will have built the second largest ZENON membrane filtration plant in the province, which will eventually replace the two existing plants for this community of 100,000 + people.

Large diameter vinyl pipe is approved for Ottawa’s water mains

Ottawa City Council voted unanimously to allow larger vinyl pipes up to 1,200 mm (48”) for its water mains on July 14, 2004.

The decision was based in part on Council’s desire to foster competitive, performance-based tendering in an effort to lower costs.

Larger diameter vinyl pipe will help lower Ottawa’s capital and operational costs, reduce risk and help Ottawa achieve some of its Kyoto targets for greenhouse gas reductions owing to the pipe’s ultra smooth interior, requiring less energy to pump water from source to tap.

This new solution to an old problem could not come at a better time - 700 water main breaks occur every day in North America, costing utilities and local economies an estimated $4 billion annually.

A recent study presented in Milan, Italy, at a worldwide pipe symposium, reported that vinyl pipe installed 70 years ago in Germany could easily see its 170th anniversary.

Municipalities in Canada that have adopted the vinyl innovation early, like Calgary and London, have reported good performance, capital and operational savings, higher efficiencies and environmental benefits.

Contact e-mail: alesan@ipexinc.com.

No benefit to fluoridation study claims

The fluoridation debate continues after four decades of controversy. Now a new study says that dental examinations of 4,800 South Australian, 10 to 15 year olds, reveal unexpected results: similar cavity rates whether the children drank fluoridated water or not, reports Armfield and Spencer in the August 2004 Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology.

Children sampled lived in fluoridated and nonfluoridated metropolitan and rural areas in South Australia.

Collected rainwater, or tank water, is the main non-fluoridated (non-public) water source for 37% of South Australians; 8% drink bottled water. The public water supplies in Adelaide, South Australia’s capital city, are fluoridated. The rest of South Australia is predominantly non-fluoridated, the authors report.

East Coast invention fixes environmental problem

There are more than 100,000 domestic septic systems in Nova Scotia. Almost all of them use a network of pipes in a soil bed to disperse treated effluent (sewage or waste). If the dispersal pipes are not completely level, one side of the disposal bed can become overloaded and fail. The failure creates environmental and health risks and the repair is expensive.

Ken Burrows, a Wellington, N.S. environmental consultant, has come up with a solution - a flow balancer. The device forces the effluent flow into two equal streams. This ensures that the effluent is evenly distributed through the disposal bed. The balanced flow means that the work of filtering the effluent is spread evenly across the disposal bed.

Mr. Burrows took his idea to the environmental innovations branch at the Department of Environment and Labour. “The department put me in touch with Mysore Satish with Dalhousie University’s faculty of engineering,” said Mr. Burrows. “Together, we finalized and tested the design.”

“The concept is simple, but we needed experimental results to demonstrate its effectiveness to regulators,” said Dr. Satish. The developers have applied for a patent and are discussing manufacturing plans.

“This invention is the latest in a series of successes we've had working with the engineering faculty at Dalhousie,” said Mr. Morash. “Their ability to apply science to real-world environmental management problems means we’ll have more successes in the future.”

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