Making drinking water safe , tour a quality drinking water treatment facility

Concerned with lead in drinking water?  This was a topic recently in Portland. Maine.  However those fears can be put to rest due to high tech water treatment equipment including ozone.  Read more below:

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STANDISH, Maine (NEWS CENTER) — Portland Water District admits they do have aging pipes, but say they take a lot of steps to ensure clean water travels to their customers.

The lead-tainted water crisis in Flint, Michigan has now attracted the attention of the United Nations, and has more people second-guessing what’s in their water.

Portland Water District

The water crisis began when Flint’s water became contaminated with lead from aging pipes when the city switched from Detroit water to the Flint River in 2014 to save money. Some children’s blood has since tested positive for lead, which is linked to learning disabilities.

Here in Maine, crews work hard to make sure drinking water is safe.

The water treatment facility for Portland and its surrounding towns sits in Standish next to Sebago Lake. There, millions of gallons of water is pumped with disinfectants, filtered, then treated with a combination of additives that make the water less corrosive on the hundreds of miles of piping.

“With the people we have working here and the systems we have in place, all those are to safeguard water quality so when our customers turn on their tap in the morning take that drink of water, they can feel assure that’s a safe product,” said Mike Koza, the lab director at the water treatment facility.

That assurance starts with Sebago Lake, one of the cleanest reservoirs in southern Maine. Millions of gallons of water is pumped into massive tanks, where generators create ozone, generating a charge that kills bacteria. From there, the water runs through U-V lights, before chlorine, fluoride, and additives that prevent corrosion as the water travels through the pipes, are all added.

Joel Anderson, the chief operator of the treatment facility says everything is monitored 24/7, and then tested in their lab. Each month the lab also tests more than 150 samples from the field to ensure the quality of the water remains when it makes it to the taps of homes and businesses.

The Portland Water District also spends about $7-million dollars every year upgrading pipes that were installed decades ago.

To view the district’s annual report, click here.

Learn more about ozone and drinking water treatment

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