Optimizing drinking water treatment in response to variable source water quality in Calgary, Alberta: integrating source characterization and process design

加拿大至少58%的最大城市社区的饮用水和美国66%的供水来自森林流域。加拿大森林及其供应的沃茨的健康受到严重野火（部分由于气候变化，野火正在增加）和森林采伐的威胁，森林采伐是为了获取纤维或预先减少风险，以减轻野火等干扰的潜在灾难性影响。其中一些压力可能导致水质日益变化和恶化，这可能使水处理过程超出其能力，从而需要进行可能成本高昂的处理变化，以确保提供安全饮用水。对饮用水水源质量的威胁对于拥有高质量森林水源集水区的社区尤其重要，例如为卡尔加里市服务的社区。他们必须通过在森林管理和处理技术投资的有效水源保护（SWP）之间找到“理想”的平衡来优化饮用水处理。在这里，将研究野火和森林采伐对饮用水可处理性的水质影响。国家的最先进的源水表征技术将被用来描述时间的变化，驱动处理工艺设计和操作的关键水质属性。将确定对水源水质的主要威胁，确定造成这些威胁的流域属性，并评估最先进的水质特征和水处理技术和/或方法。这项工作将有助于基本的研究，产生技术创新，并培养高素质的人才，他们可以有效地应用新兴的科学工具来开发急需的SWP和饮用水处理战略，技术和政策。长期的好处包括提供将污染源流域评估和保护与处理设计和操作相结合的战略。改进的SWP和治疗方法减少了与水有关的疾病的经济成本，并使供水设施能够适应土地扰动和气候变化的影响。

The drinking water for at least 58% of the largest urban communities in Canada and 66% of American water supplies originates from forested watersheds. The health of Canada's forests and the waters they supply is threatened by severe wildfires (which are increasing in part because of climate change) and forest harvesting for fiber or for pre-emptive risk reduction to mitigate the potentially catastrophic effects of disturbances such as wildfires. Some of these pressures may result in increasingly variable and deteriorated water quality that can challenge water treatment processes beyond their capacity, necessitating potentially cost-prohibitive treatment changes to ensure provision of safe drinking water. Threats to drinking water source quality are particularly significant for communities with high quality forested source watersheds, such as those that serve the City of Calgary. They must optimize drinking water treatment by finding an "ideal" balance between active source water protection (SWP) by forest management and treatment technology investments. Here, the water quality impacts of wildfire and forest harvesting on drinking water treatability will be studied. State-of-the-art source water characterization techniques will be used to describe temporal variability of key water quality attributes that drive treatment process design and operation. Key threats to source water quality will be identified, watershed attributes contributing to those threats will be identified, and state-of-the-art water quality characterization and water treatment technologies and/or approaches will be evaluated. This work will contribute essential research, generate technological innovation, and train highly qualified personnel who can effectively apply emerging scientific tools to develop much needed SWP and drinking water treatment strategies, technologies, and policies. Long-term benefits include the provision of strategies for integrating source watershed assessment and protection with treatment design and operations. Improved SWP and treatment approaches reduce the economic cost of water related illnesses, and enable water utility adaptation to the effects of land disturbances and changing climate.