Hygienic regulation of drinking water quality as a mainspring of the water treatment technology upgrade

Summary

The aspects of developing the domestic regulatory environment on drinking water quality are considered together with the effect of the tendency of introducing additional requirements on the water treatment technology by the example of the Moscow public water supply. The drinking water quality requirements both in our country and abroad are based on the criteria established by the World Health Organization in the middle of the last century. In different countries the requirements may differ depending on the national drinking water policy represented by the legislation, standards and other statutory regulations. In the Russian Federation the drinking water quality standards are determined by the sanitary-epidemiologic legislation that specifies the maximum permissible concentrations of all the regulated pollutants. The current requirements to the drinking water quality determine the process solutions implemented at the water treatment plants. Introduction of the new regulatory requirements has become a powerful impulse to upgrading the existing facilities and retrofitting new advanced methods into the treatment technology. Thus, tightening the regulations on the concentration of chlorination byproducts and the requirements to the epidemic safety (regulating viral and parasitary contamination) resulted in the methodical work on upgrading the Moscow water treatment plants with the introduction of ozonation and activated carbon filtration and membrane filtration. Even today the water treatment plants with advanced treatment facilities that guarantee water purification to the regulatory requirements supply more than 40% of the Moscow drinking water. At the same time the current regulatory documents contain inconsistencies that necessitate taking expensive measures to improve the drinking water quality. Considering the activities on revising the current requirements it is necessary to pay special attention to the harmonization of separate statutory regulations.

Key words

potable water quality , water treatment facilities , regulatory requirements , State Standard (GOST) , sanitary regulations and standards