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EVALUATION OF WATER MONITORING INSTRUMENTATION AT EPA'S WATER AWARENESS TECHNOLOGY EVALUATION RESEARCH SECURITY CENTER
Citation:
Haught*, R C., J A. Goodrich*, J Herrmann*, P. C. Kefauver, A. D. Zaffiro, AND Shaw Environmental. EVALUATION OF WATER MONITORING INSTRUMENTATION AT EPA'S WATER AWARENESS TECHNOLOGY EVALUATION RESEARCH SECURITY CENTER. Presented at AWWA Water Quality Technology Conference, Philadelphia, PA, 11/2-6/2003.
Description:
The safety and security of distribution systems has come under reassessment in the past year. Several chemical and biological agents have been identified that might constitute a credible threat against water supply systems. There have also been a few reported threats against water systems. Any attempt could cause a significant impact on the populations confidence in the nation's infrastructure distribution systems and water supplies. Issues ranging from public safety and health, ecological, and national security are under consideration in the scrutiny. The Presidential Decision Directive 63 (PDD 63) designates EPA as the lead for securing the national water infrastructure. Therefore, the Agency has been working to be proactive in the anticipation, detection, and identification of the threat of deliberate or accidental contamination of water distribution systems and supplies. Real-time monitoring of water quality is essential to effectively respond to deliberate, natural, and/or accidental human-caused conditions that may threaten the safety and health of US citizens. Real-time on-line monitors will support the security of the water supplies from deliberate injection of biological or chemical contaminants, sewage treatment plant failures, oil/chemical spills, pollutants, and pathogens are concerns facing this research study. EPA is evaluating the value of various instruments and developing performance criteria for on-line monitoring instrumentation.The primary objective of the research at the EPA WATERS Center is to develop and evaluate performance criteria for on-line real-time drinking water monitoring instrumentation. A secondary objective of this research is to develop a matrix of surrogates for evaluating and testing the performance of the on-line instruments in a distribution system. The EPA's Water Awareness Technology Evaluation Research Security (WATERS) Center utilizes an above ground simulated distribution system (DSS). Experiments are underway to evaluate the selected on-line sensors in the DSS for their ability to detect changes in water quality due to chemical, physical and microbial agents at concentrations that would present a public risk in a distribution system. Sensitivity, response, limit of detection, reproducibility, and potential for false positives, false negatives and other limitations of the selected sensors are being evaluated. EPA investigators selected a platform array of real-time on-line sensors and instrumentation that represent the various types of technologies currently used by utilities to monitoring water quality. EPA is conducting studies to evaluate the changes of water quality through the introduction of various contaminants