Pilot Treatment Plant interior.

Finished Water Monitoring at the Pilot Plant

USEPA sets regulations that limit the amount of certain substances in drinking water. USEPA defines where and how often samples for each substance must be collected. The table below shows the substances found in compliance monitoring for the finished water at the Pilot Plant. For surface water, USEPA also requires that specific treatment techniques are used and that the treatment techniques are effective.

Download Results for Voluntary Monitoring of the Pilot Plant

2007 Pilot Plant: Source Water Quality Voluntary Monitoring Results

2007 Pilot Plant: Finished Water Quality Voluntary Monitoring Results

2008 Pilot Plant: Source Water Quality Voluntary Monitoring Results

2008 Pilot Plant: Finished Water Quality Voluntary Monitoring Results

Just How Safe Is It?

For many years, the Water Authority has monitored the Rio Grande to establish a water quality baseline. Samples are collected at various sites along the river from the Heron Lake outlet to Albuquerque’s diversion dam site. Heron Lake stores San Juan-Chama water.

It takes about three hours for water to travel from the diversion dam (pictured on left) to the settled water ponds at the surface water treatment plant. After settling for at least a day in the ponds, it only takes two or three hours of treatment to produce the clean, finished drinking water pictured on the right.

The monitoring results compare favorably to USEPA drinking water quality standards. Because no metals, minerals, or nutrients nor organic substances have been detected in excess of USEPA standards, river water will meet requirements for those substances. Likewise, levels of radionuclides detected in the river water are far below USEPA standards and the risk of radioactivity potentially flowing from Los Alamos is extremely low.

Water treatment will remove particulate matter from the water including turbidity, sediment and microbial contaminants such as bacteria, Giardia and Cryptosporidium.

Ozone and granular activated carbon filtration are effective in removing organics, including pharmaceutically active compounds that may have found their way into the river. If such compounds show up, they will be oxidized, then absorbed onto the filters.

Additional samples will be collected every year to determine water quality changes over time. This information will assist the Authority in modifying or refining treatment or identifying the need for additional treatment to ensure the high quality of our drinking water.

Surface water treatment plant operator checks the settling rate.

USEPA requires surface water treatment systems to monitor for Cryptosporidium in the source water. Cryptosporidium is a microbial pathogen found in surface water throughout the U.S.  The monitoring data summarized below is for the source water. Our monitoring results indicate these organisms are either absent from the source water or present in very low quantities (0 or 1 oocyst per 10 liters of river water).  Based on the levels of Cryptosporidium found in source water, the USEPA requires water systems to use specific treatment techniques and to demonstrate their efficiency. The surface water treatment plant was designed to provide a multi-barrier approach (pre-sedimentation, clarification and filtration) to removing Cryptosporidium in order to meet the USEPA treatment technique requirements.

Current test methods approved by USEPA do not distinguish between dead organisms and those capable of causing disease. If ingested, these parasites may produce symptoms of nausea, stomach cramps, diarrhea, and associated headaches.

Treatment Technique (TT): A required process intended to reduce the level of a contaminant in drinking water.

Oocyst: A capsulated spore of Cryptosporidium.