Water Quality Assignment.html
Utilities are required to produce annual water quality reports for the water they provide to their customers. These reports list all measured contaminants in the water. In this folder there is a PDF of the 2020 report for the Irvine Ranch Water District (in Irvine, CA). Read through the report and then do the following:
Make a table of the major ionic species in the water. Major species are those that have a concentration in the mg/l range. (It must also be an actual species and not an aggregate measure like hardness or alkalinity.) You will note that there are 3 different water sources (groundwater, surface water, MWD imported water) Prepare your table for only the local groundwater and surface water.
The two chemicals that contribute to hardness are calcium and magnesium. Individual concentrations for those species are reported, as well as the aggregate hardness parameter. Show that the sums of Ca and Mg add up (or don’t) to the reported hardness. (extra bonus if you look up grains/gal and show those calcs as well; not really, but as you can see units are nutty.)
Check the electroneutrality of the water by comparing cations to anions. Is this difference less than 10%?
The groundwater and surface waters seem to have quite different chemical composition. Why might surface and groundwaters have such different compositions?
Pick one contaminant from either the radiologicals, inorganic chemicals or secondary standards section and do some quick research. Why is this chemical regulated? What human health issue(s) does it cause? What are the potential environmental sources? What are some of the treatment methods? (National Primary Drinking Water Regulations and Secondary Standards might be a good terms to google.)
This assignment will be uploaded to a DropBox. The final product should be typed with a nicely prepared table. (You can include extra columns in your table like I demonstrated in lecture.) The answers to 4 and 5 should be complete but not longer than a page in total. (don’t just copy an entire wikipedia entry.)
