Approaches to risk assessment and selection of water treatment technologies to provide consumers with quality drinking water

Abstract

The processes of organizing centralized drinking water supply for the population are based on the requirements of sanitary legislation and technical regulation, depending on the quality of available water sources on the applied technological solutions in the field of water treatment, as well as on the infrastructure of water supply processes. At the same time, the quality of drinking water from centralized systems is one of the most important criteria for the operation of enterprises in the city water supply and sewage system. The inconsistency of the quality of drinking water with centralized water supply, regularly noted in the reports of Federal Agency for Consumer Protection (Rospotrebnadzor), indicates problems of ensuring the safety of the population, and, on the other hand, incurs additional financial costs for the water supply company. It should be noted that the preservation and assessment of the quality potential of water supply sources, which under the influence of anthropogenic factors is under constant threat of degradation, is also an important factor in influencing the organization of centralized drinking water supply from the point of view of standardizing technological and infrastructural solutions. Legislative requirements in the field of drinking water quality make it extremely difficult to fulfill obligations to supply the population with drinking water of the required quality. It should be noted that the existing regulatory documents regulating the methodology of sanitary - hygienic assessment of water quality do not fully take into account the modern technological capabilities of the facilities for the preparation and transportation of drinking water, including change in emissions of pollutants caused by anthropogenic or natural causes.

Despite the significant scientific and methodological amount of data regarding the formation of requirements for centralized drinking water supply, the issues of ensuring the required water quality remain insufficiently studied. There is a need for interconnection of standardization of approaches to the selection of technological solutions and equipment, the formation and management of infrastructure facilities, evaluation of the effectiveness of design and operational components of water supply systems, sufficient and necessary levels of sanitary and technological safety, based including on economic efficiency and enterprise capabilities. The principles of designing new infrastructure facilities and centralized drinking water supply facilities and reconstruction of existing ones should be based on the proposed integrated life cycle cost methodology, which allows optimizing production and investment costs of urban facilities.

Issues of providing high-quality drinking water through centralized water supply systems are resolved separately from the standpoint of hygiene requirements, technological and organizational solutions. This article proposes approaches that choose an effective water treatment technology, taking into account the assessment of health risks, positioning the technical factors of the water supply system and the economic assessment of the technology, taking into account the above points.