Phosphorus Removal Is Critical For Protecting Drinking Water Supplies

Safe drinking water is vital to the health of a community. Recently, removal of difficult “forever chemicals”, PFAS, have been in the news. But there may be an even more immediate threat to your community’s drinking water safety coming from harmful algae blooms fueled by excess phosphorus.

Toxins From Algae Blooms Are Extremely Hard To Remove From Drinking Water

Many algae blooms produce toxins, which can impact human health. The effects range from neurological disorders to kidney and liver failure. In some cases, especially for the elderly or those with compromised systems, exposures can even be deadly.

But removal of these toxins after the algae bloom takes hold, often in a reservoir or lake used as a source for drinking water, is extremely expensive. If algae are drawn into the intake, killing the algae actually releases MORE TOXINS. The consequences for a drinking water utility are often disastrous, frequently requiring sending bottled water to all customers until the system is thoroughly cleaned.

Prevention Of Algae Blooms Is Key

Algae blooms often start in the spring and intensify throughout the summer into fall. Preventing the blooms is critical to preventing algal toxins in drinking water. This prevention has centered around reducing phosphorus in the source waters, and that includes in wastewater effluent. Phosphorus is usually the limiting nutrient, and in phosphorus rich waters, combined with warm temperatures, sunlight, and calm conditions (conditions of reservoirs), algae can thrive, creating problems for the drinking water plants.

The same algae blooms can threaten human health, pets and wildlife in the streams and rivers that we love to use for recreation, so keeping phosphorus levels low is essential to community health.

Neo WaterFX provides a cost-efficient phosphorus removal strategy for wastewater.

WaterFX is the most cost-efficient and effective coagulant for removing phosphorus down to very low levels, thereby protecting drinking water sources downstream as well as recreational areas. 

Using WaterFX will not only save your utility money versus the other removal strategies, but it will also improve your operations and plant safety when compared to other methods. 

Check out how WaterFX helped the Jordanelle Special Service District achieve the lowest phosphorus limits in Utah (0.06 mg/L), and helped control algae in the Jordanelle Reservoir, used for both recreation and drinking water. 

Then contact us to see how Neo WaterFX can help you meet your phosphorus limits.