Daryl Mandoza , product manager for wastewater treatment solutions at Kurita America , shows why upstream production facilities in the US need to think about aspects of water treatment that they did not before
In 1972 , the US Congress passed
the Clean Water Act ( CWA ), which established incentives , penalties and funding for communities to clean their water . At the time , the Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA ) estimated that over two thirds of the waters in America were unfit for fishing or swimming ; this number was cut in half after the CWA was established . Almost 50 years later the early success of the programme has come to a halt and even gone into reverse . A combination of funding cuts , ageing infrastructure and new pollutants has pushed the responsibility for water treatment back upstream to the facilities that produce the wastewater . Historically , large , centralised , publicly owned treatment works ( POTWs ) were the beneficiaries of the CWA . Funding and regulatory changes made investment in these beneficial for the communities and production facilities that used their services . However , the American Society of Civil Engineers ( ASCE ) issued a D + grade to the US ’ s POTWs in 2017 and they continue to fail . Looking ahead , it is clear that the needs of both drinking water treatment and relevant infrastructure are going to be seriously underfunded
( Figure 1 ). Production facilities will be required to manage their water use and discharge more efficiently and effectively because the local POTW cannot handle the water flow and / or the contaminant loading .
Facility drivers
The reality is that the burden of water treatment is moving away from the centralised POTW and further upstream to the production facilities . While production facilities have always focused on optimising their operations to maximise profits , they now have an additional water treatment cost centre .
Wastewater treatmeant
Drinking water
60 SPECIALITY CHEMICALS MAGAZINE ESTABLISHED 1981