AWWA WQTC69451

Running coincident with, and parallel to, the rise of public interest in water quality, regulatory requirements are refined on a continual basis and new standards are frequently established. As of 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) required that drinking water be monitored for 90 contaminants. With a wealth of water quality information that may be necessary to disclose and stricter monitoring required of utilities, it may be a difficult task to provide this information to the public without increasing overhead costs related to public relations. Such a balancing act can become even more difficult when a utility provides supply through multiple sources as not all customers throughout the service area are provided water with the same quality characteristics. This paper discusses the manner by which the Madison Water Utility (MWU) developed a web-based address lookup system as an end result to help direct the public to obtain for themselves the water quality reports directly related to the sources from which they are served. MWU proposed a project that would consist of a three-step approach: hydraulic/water quality modeling would be performed to understand and identify source water movement through the system; geographic information system (GIS) applications would be utilized to associate customer service addresses to the modeling results; and, a database obtained from the GIS efforts would be incorporated in the utility's website with links to the water quality reports specific to a customer's location within the system. Includes abstract only.