From source to tap - good quality drinking water for today and tomorrow

Eawag News 65, December 2008

complete issue [pdf, 3,7 MB]


Editorial: Provision of Safe Drinking Water: A Critical Task for Society
Janet Hering

Can the quality of drinking water be taken for granted?
Urs von Gunten
Clean drinking water is generally taken for granted in this country – although Switzerland’s water suppliers are also constantly confronted with new challenges. In developing countries, however, the ideal of “safe water for all” is still a long way off. How are Eawag researchers helping to secure drinking water quality in the long term? [pdf]


Water resources and climate change
Rolf Kipfer and David M. Livingstone
Good-quality drinking water should have the right temperature and be colourless, taste-free, odour-free, microbiologically safe and toxicologically acceptable. But how are water resources – and hence drinking water quality – affected by climate change? This article is an attempt to take stock. [pdf]


River restoration and groundwater protection
Olaf A. Cirpka
Mainly for quantitative reasons, groundwater wells used for drinking water are often located near rivers. In many cases, natural purification processes in the subsurface are strong enough to allow distribution of the extracted groundwater without further treatment. But is this still possible when channelized rivers are widened and the distance to pumping stations is reduced? [pdf]


Geogenic contaminants
Annette Johnson
Arsenic and fluoride are the most widespread geogenic contaminants in groundwater worldwide. In many developing countries, drinking water from contaminated sources is consumed untreated. The cross-cutting Eawag project “Water Resource Quality” involves the production of risk maps enabling potentially vulnerable regions to be identified and the development of elimination methods suitable for implementation in practice. [pdf]


New methods for assessing the safety of drinking water
Thomas Egli
The microbiological safety of drinking water is assessed by allowing bacteria to grow into visible colonies. However, this method is time-consuming and often significantly underestimates the number of microorganisms contained in water. A flow cytometry-based method developed at Eawag is more rapid and reliable – and also more versatile. [pdf]


Removing trace organic contaminants
Andreas Peter
With modern analytical methods, new trace contaminants of anthropogenic
and natural origin are constantly being discovered in water. But are these substances effectively removed at today’s drinking water treatment facilities? Two methods – activated carbon filtration and chemical oxidation – are assessed here. [pdf]


Tomorrow’s drinking water treatment
Wouter Pronk
Most of the country’s water treatment facilities, which were built in the middle of the 20th century, need to be renewed. As part of the cross-cutting Eawag project Wave 21 (Drinking water in the 21st century), two new process combinations involving membrane filtration have been tested. [pdf]


Fruitful partnership between research and practice
Erich Mück, Wasserversorgung Zürich
For some years, Zurich Waterworks (WVZ) has collaborated with Eawag and an industrial partner; this partnership has become even closer in the course of the cross-cutting Eawag project Wave 21. But what are the ingredients of a successful project that brings together such a variety of interests and aims? Here, we present a first-hand account. [pdf]


In Brief