AWWA JAW57842

Small systems face numerous obstacles to treating and delivering high-quality drinking water. Many small water providers have never had the financial or operational capability to solve water quality and compliance problems, and their customers have often had to put up with poor-quality drinking water that does not meet regulatory standards. Central treatment and distribution may not be feasible for many small systems. Given that <1% of treated water is actually ingested, treating all of the water in a system to optimal drinking water specifications does not represent a practical use of resources, especially in light of increasingly stringent regulations, higher costs of excess treatment of water that will not be ingested, water quality deterioration and losses during distribution, and reduced access to high-quality source water. In a two-tier system, only the small percentage of water that is consumed is treated to the highest quality. The use of bottled water or point-of-use and point-of-entry approaches in a decentralized, two-tier system represents an opportunity for small communities to achieve safer and higher-quality drinking water than they might otherwise have had, more quickly and at reasonable cost. Although compliance obstacles must be overcome, applications currently in use are proving to be successful and are providing data that will help determine future guidelines for operation, regulation, and compliance. Includes 29 references, tables, figures.