Abstract

ISLAM, Nilufar; SADIQ, Rehan; RODRIGUEZ, Manuel J.  and  LEGAY, Christelle. Assessment of water quality in distribution networks through the lens of disinfection by-product rules. Water SA [online]. 2016, vol.42, n.2, pp.337-349. ISSN 1816-7950.  http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/wsa.v42i2.17.

Disinfection with chlorine is a common practice to ensure secured drinking water, but results in potentially harmful disinfection by-products (DBPs), when excess chlorination is done. The US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) has established Stage 1 and Stage 2 disinfection by-product Rules (DBP rules) to control DBP exposure. A modified version of the Canadian Council of Ministries of the Environment water quality index (CCME WQI) is used to assess water quality. CCME WQI is a globally accepted index to assess water quality, but is too generic to be used for DBP rules. The study developed a scheme to make the index suitable for DBP rules. A scoring method based on an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is applied to assign weights based on DBP rules. A previously modified CCME WQI (Islam et al., 2014) is adapted along with the weights to perform the assessment at the distribution network (DN). A case study was performed on 7 sampling stations in a Québec City DN. The spatial water quality variations are presented using kriging - a geostatistical method, which identifies the regions with relatively poor water quality and highlights the potential locations for re-chlorination points. The proposed assessment formulation is flexible to handle situations with limited data, which makes it especially suited to smaller municipalities.

Keywords : CCME water quality index; Stage 1 DBP Rule; Stage 2 DBP Rule; chlorination.