Source Water Protection Emerges As Water Sector's Top Challenge
A New Water Industry Survey Reveals Concerns About Pollution. Plus: A Breakthrough In PFAS Cleanup That Could Help Water Providers.
Each year, the American Water Works Association (AWWA), the largest organization of water supply professionals in the world, surveys members providing insights into the challenges and priorities facing the water sector.
Protecting drinking water at its source has become the water sector's top priority, according to the 2024 State of the Water Industry (SOTWI) report.
It’s the first time in the survey’s 21-year history, that source water protection was named as the top issue for water professionals, surpassing the long-standing top concern of aging infrastructure.
Source water refers to sources of water (such as rivers, streams, lakes, reservoirs, springs, and groundwater) that provide water to public drinking water supplies and private wells. Protecting source water from contamination helps reduce treatment costs and may avoid or defer the need for complex treatment.
“If we don’t have safe and reliable sources, we don’t have the ability to support public health,” said Raven Lawson, chair of AWWA’s Source Water Protection Committee. “Just as we recognize threats to aging infrastructure, we now more readily recognize and understand threats to our source waters.”
Several factors likely contributed to this shift, according to the report. Long-term concerns related to climate change and drought affecting the Colorado River Basin certainly had an impact. Additionally, growing concerns about emerging contaminants such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that threaten water quality at the source are also a factor. Plus, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law may have mitigated some concerns about funding for capital projects, easing the anxiety about aging infrastructure.
More than 60 percent of utility respondents report having implemented or being in the process of implementing source water protection plans and programs.
In most cases, states are responsible for implementing the regulatory requirements that affect water protection under the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act. States are also responsible for establishing initiatives to provide technical and financial assistance to drinking water systems pursuing source water protection activities.
This year’s report is based on a survey of more than 2,400 water professionals conducted in late 2023 and also covers topics such as cybersecurity, climate change, workforce, and more.
The 2024 report shows that the water sector faces a multitude of challenges beyond source water protection, including:
Aging infrastructure: The need for infrastructure investment remains urgent, ranking as the third most pressing challenge. Utilities are prioritizing capital improvement plans (81 percent reporting implementation) and exploring innovative technologies to extend the lifespan of aging assets.
PFAS contamination: Growing concern about PFAS, ranked as the top water quality concern for water professionals, coupled with the high cost of treatment, is driving the need for prevention and source water protection strategies.
Cybersecurity: Ranked as the 10th most challenging issue, the threat of cyberattacks on water systems is increasing, and 49 percent of utilities are investing in cybersecurity measures to protect critical infrastructure and customer data.
Climate change: Drought and water shortages (ranked 9th) and climate risk and resilience (12th) are increasingly impacting water resources, highlighting the need for climate-resilient infrastructure and adaptive management practices.
Workforce: Attracting and retaining skilled workers remains a top 10 challenge (8th), especially in the face of retiring talent and the need for new digital skills.
Financial sustainability: Ranked 5th most challenging, balancing affordability with the need to invest in infrastructure and meet regulatory requirements continues to be a pressing concern, prompting exploration of innovative rate structures (73 percent of utilities surveyed plan a rate increase in 2024) and alternative financing.
Survey respondents ranked PFAS as the number one water quality concern.
Managing PFAS contamination poses a significant challenge for water utilities, both in terms of characterizing health risks for consumers and paying the high cost of treatment, nearly $40 billion by AWWA’s estimate in capital improvement investments.
About 58 percent of respondents said that they are “very to extremely concerned” about the issue. The widespread concern highlights the need for measures to keep harmful PFAS out of source water, protect utilities from liability due to PFAS pollution they did not create, and increase federal funding for treatment upgrades.
Top-Ranked Water Quality Concerns
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)
Pathogens
Lead & copper
Disinfection byproducts (DBPs)
Non-point source pollution
Microplastics
Cyanotoxins
Nutrient removal
The 2024 SOTWI report illustrates a complex picture of the water sector, highlighting both progress and persistent challenges, according to the Executive Summary, available on AWWA’s State of the Water Industry resource page. Contamination, climate change, aging infrastructure, cybersecurity threats, workforce issues, and financial pressures are not isolated problems. Together, they form a complex wave of challenges that ripples throughout the entire water industry.
These findings remind me of something said by former president Richard Nixon in his 1970 State of the Union address:
We can no longer afford to consider air and water common property, free to be abused by anyone without regard to the consequences. Instead, we should begin now to treat them as scarce resources, which we are no more free to contaminate than we are free to throw garbage into our neighbor’s yard.
Make Drinking Water Safe Again
A discovery by UC Riverside scientists could assist water providers across the nation as they face new federal standards to limit “forever chemical” concentrations in drinking water.
In light of the recent (and monumental) regulations from the U.S. EPA to restrict certain types of PFAS to 4 parts per trillion in the nation’s tap water, water providers are now in need of new PFAS cleanup solutions.
A UCR team led by Haizhou Liu, a professor of chemical and environmental engineering, discovered a chemical process that allows high levels of salt normally found in wastewater from water treatment plants to act as a catalyst that facilitates the breakup of PFAS compounds by cleaving the stubbornly strong fluorine-to-carbon bonds. Normally, salt in wastewater impedes the cleanup of chemical pollutants.
This solution to PFAS pollution is detailed in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
The work builds on Liu’s discovery in 2022 that PFAS compounds can be destroyed in a one-step treatment by irradiating water with short-wavelength ultraviolet light via tuning a process that does not require additional chemicals or leave behind toxic residuals. Both works are protected by patents.
“We were looking at PFAS with different carbon chains, short chains, and we also looked at salty wastewater that has a high concentration of chloride and sulfate,” Liu said in a statement. “The results show that the salinity in wastewater acts as a catalyst when receiving the UV light to make this process even more effective and much faster.”
Liu said the process is extremely efficient at PFAS destruction because the short-wavelength ultraviolet light (which is distinct from traditional UV light used for water disinfection) is not quenched by undesirable chemicals in the wastewater.
“It not only destructs long-chain PFAS, but also short chains PFAS that are more difficult to get rid of by traditional separation technologies,” Liu said.
The breakthrough by Liu’s team is expected to benefit municipal and privately owned water providers that use or plan to use what is known as “ion exchange” technology to separate PFAS compounds from drinking water supplies that create brine waste containing PFAS pollutants.
In ion exchange water treatments, negatively charged PFAS molecules are exchanged with negatively charged ions on the surface of tiny resin beads in large treatment tanks.
This causes the PFAS pollutants to glom onto the beads. But after several months, resin beads become ineffective because they get saturated with PFAS molecules. The resin beads can be regenerated and reused by flushing them with saltwater. This creates a brine wastewater with heavily concentrated PFAS pollution that now can be treated with Liu’s process.
The utility of Liu’s process goes beyond permanently destroying PFAS from ion exchange treatment plants.
Brine wastewater containing toxic PFAS is also produced by water treatment technologies that use membrane reverse osmosis filtration technologies. Additionally, landfill leachate wastewater, salty industrial wastewater produced from chemical manufacturing processes that use fluorine polymers, and brackish groundwater impacted by PFAS pollution can be cleansed using the method discovered by Liu and his team.
Questions about the AWWA’s new State of The Water Industry report? Excited about this new PFAS cleanup solution? Let us know in the comments below!
Lui’s process sounds expensive. I don’t suppose Monsanto/Bayer will be held responsible? 🤨