A mysterious pollutant was swirling beneath the streets in one corner of El Paso.
Our everyday utility monitoring revealed that high levels of heavy metals - mercury, copper, nickel and aluminum - were flowing through local sewers into one of our four wastewater plants. This was a troubling discovery.
Because we live in the Chihuahuan Desert, every drop of water is precious. For our city to grow and prosper, we must purify and recycle water whenever possible. Industrial pollution in our wastewater threatens our health and increases water treatment costs for the rest of our law-abiding citizens.
At many U.S. water utilities, the discovery of unauthorized discharges into sewer systems leads to long and expensive investigations. Who is the polluter? It’s not always easy to answer. Fortunately, though, El Paso Water had already embraced an advanced technology allowing us to track the pollution to its source - a jewelry manufacturer just off Interstate 10.
What we use is a kind of CSI for wastewater, a high-tech monitoring system so precise that it tracks big dumps and little leaks - in real time via our laptops and desktops. Our sensors detected when pollution levels rose. Our clean-water engineers kept moving upstream in our underground pipes, and then further sampling helped us pinpoint the culprit.
Because the business would not abide by El Paso Water rules and regulations, it was cut off from the privilege of our water and wastewater service. That industrial water pollution has stopped.
El Paso is a national leader among utilities for using technology to protect valuable water supplies. Our advanced wastewater monitoring system is being deployed at a crucial time.
Our lifeblood, the Rio Grande, has been running dry so often that some frustrated farmers have started to call it the Rio Sand. Flows from the Upper Rio Grande headwaters in the Colorado Rockies are expected to decrease by 50% in the next 70 years.
What’s crucial for us is water reuse. Purified water is a sustainable, drought-proof resource. Within the next seven years, El Paso Water plans to accommodate half of all new water needs for the city at the future Advanced Water Purification Facility, where treated wastewater will be transformed into fresh drinking water. The city could eventually support as many as 40,000 new households through water reuse.
Water in our sewers must be thoroughly purified to safe and clean drinking water standards before it can flow from a home faucet. The dirtier the wastewater, the harder we must work to clean it.
For El Paso, engineers at Kando, a water technology company, designed a monitoring system that provides instantaneous pollution monitoring and artificial intelligence analysis of wastewater trends. The technology can detect minute changes in the composition of wastewater flows.
Because everyone flushes and showers, wastewater can tell much about the health of a community. The new tech can monitor the spread of COVID, as well as the use of illegal drugs and dumping by methamphetamine labs. It also detects and flags leaks and clogs in underground pipes.
The tech creates a big deterrence for other would-be polluters.
El Paso can’t have the prosperity we desire without a safe and efficient water system. Ongoing drought makes every drop of water even more precious.
We all benefit by protecting the water that flows through our homes and businesses. El Paso Water is committed to protecting the wastewater that flows beneath our streets, too.
Негізгі бет How EPWater uses tech to find and stop polluters
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