Rural Water - Quarter 3, 2017 - 35
TECHNOLOGY Ammonia: A Growing Problem with a Practical Solution BY JAMES ESTRADA, PHD i It's not easy being a water treatment professional. First and foremost, it's your responsibility to provide your community with safe drinking water in a sustainable, cost-effective manner. Couple this with the litany of other obstacles facing rural communities, including staffing shortages, escalating operational costs and limited financial resources to address aging infrastructure, and it's easy to see why your job is so challenging on a daily basis. And if that wasn't enough, communities like yours also have to contend with contaminants from nearby agricultural and farming practices. One such contaminant, ammonia, has started to draw considerable attention from water professionals throughout the U.S. While ammonia is not believed to pose immediate serious threats to human health, it can have dramatic and costly consequences for treatment facilities and their ability to distribute safe drinking water to consumers. Despite no EPA mandated maximum contaminant level (MCL) for ammonia, the World Health Organization (WHO) has suggested a threshold of 0.2 mg/L for drinking water. Alarmingly, recent studies found levels exceeding 0.5 mg/L in 44 U.S. states, with multiple Midwest communities at or near 1.0 3mg/L - more than five times the WHO recommended threshold. While ammonia can enter drinking water naturally through aquifers, excessive concentrations are often due to runoff from fertilized fields and animal feedlots. Elevated ammonia concentrations can lead to inconsistent or excessive chlorine demands, corrosion problems, excessive biofilm growth, increased concentrations of nitrite (from nitrification in the distribution system) and taste and odor complaints from consumers. Furthermore, ammonia contamination can interfere with the removal of other The USEPA and AdEdge accept the 2017 FLC Executive Board Technology RURAL WATER 35