- Well, thanks for having me.
This talk is source to tap,
and put on by Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
I'm Gary Wozniak, and I work for the DEQ in Kalamazoo.
I'm a graduate of Michigan Tech university,
I've got a Bachelors of Science
in environmental engineering.
Three years experience in sewer construction,
you mentioned city of Lansing, I was doing that in the '80s.
[laughs]
Separating their sewers.
I'm a Michigan-licensed professional engineer.
I have three water treatment licenses through the state.
I have 26 years working for the state in drinking water.
My first 10 years were in the UP district,
and then I moved to southwest Michigan, Kalamazoo,
where I've been there since 2000.
I'm also a member of the American Water Works Association,
Michigan section, and serve as education council co-chair.
I'm hoping that this talk clears up
some of the confusion.
I've been hearing things in the media
that don't sound quite right.
One of the articles with the Fraser sinkhole
was that they were going to divert the sewage
from the large interceptor to the Mt. Clemens water plant.
And when I read that in the newspaper,
part of me panics, the other part
says, no, that can't be true.
And then I read the article, and it was
the waste water plant that they were diverting it to,
not the water plant.
But I think some of these things need to be cleared up.
And I'm not blaming the press.
We need to do a better job of explaining these things,
not everybody knows it.
And as professionals I think we
take that for granted sometimes.
So let's bring this back to Michigan.
We're the Great Lakes state.
20% of the world's fresh water.
And it's no surprise that most of Michigan residents
drink from the Great Lakes in some way.
Lake St. Clair, Detroit River,
serves the Great Lakes water authority city of Detroit.
And that's about four million people in southeast Michigan
and it's the third largest water provider in the nation.
Also, small towns like Mackinac Island and St. Ignace,
drink from the Straits of Mackinac.
And it's not just the lakes themselves,
but the Detroit River, the St. Mary's River,
all of those provide a really good source for clean water.
Inland rivers are a little more challenging.
They are more susceptible to dramatic changes
in water quality from run-off after
a rain event, or snow melt.
But I do want to point out, two of these cities,
city of Ann Arbor, drinks from the Huron River,
and the city of Manistique drinks out of the Indian River
up in the upper peninsula.
Both of those communities won the state taste contest.
Manistique won last year, they went
to the nationals in Chicago and got thoroughly thrashed.
But it was just nice seeing a small community
up against the big boys.
And then the city of Ann Arbor is going to compete
in Philadelphia this summer.
So if you know someone from Ann Arbor, congratulate them.
They have the best-tasting water right now in Michigan.
Surface water and groundwater.
A lot of communities choose to have groundwater,
it's most of the time, less treatment involved
in groundwater, maybe some iron removal, or softening.
Battle Creek, Lansing, and Kalamazoo are
examples of cities that serve
groundwater to their customers.
And if I could look at a well from the side view,
you know, if I could take a picture, like an ant farm,
it might look something like this cartoon here.
The well penetrates into the soil, and into the aquifer.
And as the water is extracted from the aquifer,
there's a drawdown that occurs.
So that well will affect the groundwater table
in its immediate area.
Also, I want to use this slide to show that
we're lifting water from the water table
at the aquifer, or from the surface
water at the lake or river, we're lifting water.
Most of the expense in a water utility is
it's not from personnel, chemicals,
or after the initial infrastructure's been built,
it's the cost of electricity to lift water in the air.
And to move it around.
And a municipal well has a life
expectancy of about 60 years.
Now, that was a side view profile,
this is a top view model.
If you see, this municipality here
has their well on the east side of town,
and a half-mile radius around the well.
Well the water's moving.
So if they're extracting from a moving aquifer underwater,
it really doesn't form the circle
as much as it does this elonginated shape here.
And what we do as modelers
is we try to determine at average pumping,
what effect does a 10-year time of travel have
that contributes to this well.
So if you're driving through town
and you see the sign, Entering the Well Head Protection Area
what you're doing is you're crossing
an outer boundary, perhaps.
And it helps city planners,
this information helps them maybe
to site a new landfill or something,
get it outside of that time of travel
for their municipal well,
and helps protect the area that contributes to the well.
Water is not pure in the environment.
It has to be treated, impurities, toxins removed.
Groundwater primarily, the impurities
are aesthetic in nature, meaning that they're a nuisance,
they may not harm you, but they're a real nuisance.
Hard water forms perhaps too much scale,
or prevents soap from lathering,
so we want to treat for hardness.
Iron and manganese, black and brown water.
It's not good to have, we want our water clear.
Sulfur in the water may have our
water smell like rotten eggs.
So these things are treated with
groundwater, aesthetic treatment.
However, nitrate and arsenic.
Nitrate's in fertilizer, so it's in the farm field run off,
and it's part of groundwater at times.
And arsenic is a natural element
with a very low health standard.
Several municipalities treat for arsenic and nitrate.
There's color, there's taste
and odor, and then there's corrosion
that has to be treated for to make
our distribution water less corrosive.
Surface water, on the other hand,
the primary treatment is health concerns.
Disease-causing microbes in the surface water
can get us sick, and we don't want that,
so we treat for turbidity or cloudiness in the water,
we treat and remove color, and then once we
add a disinfectant, we create disinfection by-products
which aren't good for us, so we have to treat those.
And also taste and odor, and again, corrosion
in our distribution system.
Every year, regulated contaminants
have to be reported to the public
in the Consumer Confidence Report.
So you can read your utility,
what they've tested for, and the levels of contaminants
every year with their CCR we call it,
Consumer Confidence Report.
When we extract water from surface,
we have to build an intake,
or some sort of way to get the water out,
and they're hard to take pictures when they're under water,
60-feet deep and it's dark and bubbly, and so
I'll show you this construction, of course,
is a little bit easier to see.
But this is city of St. Joseph lake pipe in Lake Michigan.
Get it away from shore, away from ice influence
and shifting sands, and river influence.
So they put these water intakes away from shore.
And if I could
describe the intake itself on the bottom of the lake,
we sometimes refer to it as a crib.
It's referred to that on navigational charts.
It has to be deep enough so the oar boats don't bump into it
and it has to be above the bottom,
so shifting sands don't get in.
I drew this picture because, again,
that lift, I want to emphasize that we lift water.
A lot of expense goes from bringing it
to this lake's level source here,
through our shore well pumping station,
up to the treatment plant.
And the shore well pumping station
just by hydraulics and laws of physics
has to be close to the lake source.
The water plant on the other hand,
can be adjacent to the lake source, or miles away.
The work's being done here, and we want to fill
the basement of that pumping station
with lake water to pump it out.
Here, the city of St. Joseph has two pumping stations
in a short walk to the water treatment plant,
all along the shore of Lake Michigan.
Lake Huron, Saginaw Bay.
The Saginaw Midland Water Supply Corporation
takes water way out at Whitefish Point,
and pumps that raw water over 50 miles
to both Saginaw and Midland.
And they do that to get farther out in the bay
and have a better water source than
perhaps down here where there's more river influence.
And it's not as deep.
After water leaves the water treatment plant,
again, we lift it up to the water tower, or elevated tank.
The tank's real important,
it provides constant water pressure,
it provides fire protection when we need it,
and it allows the pumps to rest.
It's Michigan, it gets cold in the,
obviously the farther north we go, the colder it gets,
and I get the question often, how do they
keep the tank from freezing in the winter?
Well the operator has to take care,
he's going to add heat by exchanging the water,
putting warm water from the ground or the lake
back into the tank, and then letting it drain,
and exchanging it before it can
freeze, with some more warm water.
And if careful attention is not paid to that process,
you can freeze a tank, it's not a good
day at the water plant when that happens.
But fortunately, it happens very seldom.
It's also a good billboard.
This community chooses it to use
to intimidate their rival football team.
That's by their football field.
The Bridgman Fighting Bees.
Or it could be a community outreach.
Just the artistic nature of this community
shows it's on the lake shore, they grow grapes,
and they have beach and sunsets,
so it's kind of a shoreline art project.
After the water tower,
the water enters into a series of pipes and valves,
and network throughout the streets
to the homes and businesses.
This shows a municipal water main out in the street,
and then it's connected to the home or business,
through a service pipe, a single pipe
that serves the dwelling.
Most municipalities separate,
at the property line, ownership.
So up to the property line, the service line
is owned by the municipality.
After the property line, the service line
is owned by the homeowner.
Not all municipalities do that, but most do.
I live in Kalamazoo, and Kalamazoo
owns the entire service line all the way into the home.
Again, if I could look at that service line sideways,
cut into the earth and look at it sideways,
it might resemble this cartoon.
We have the water main here in the street,
and the service line attaches to the water main.
We call this little crook there the gooseneck,
and that's to allow the service line
to settle a bit without pulling out of the water main.
So we've got this little gooseneck
here up to a curb stop or curb box
where the utility can turn on and off
the water at the homeowner.
And then notice the five to seven feet depth of bury.
We do that to keep frost from freezing our service line.
However, if your community predates the automobile,
it most definitely predates the snowplow, okay?
And without plowing the streets,
frost penetration doesn't go quite as deep.
So my point is, in the older communities
didn't necessarily do five to seven feet deep,
they may have done two to three feet,
'cause it's easier with a hand shovel.
And now that we plow the streets,
those service lines tend to be tricky
to keep out of the frost line.
They may freeze up.
Service line materials commonly used today are copper,
or some type of plastic, either
a PVC or high-density polyethylene.
Service line materials no longer used
or approved for use are lead,
and you can tell lead from its gray appearance,
and that sweat joint there, that sweat solder bulb.
Or galvanized steel, which is a zinc
coating on a rigid steel pipe, it's threaded.
Once that zinc coating is gone,
the steel pipe corrodes very fast.
Galvanized steel is a short-lived material,
and unfortunately, many communities
used it in the '50s through the '70s,
and need replacement today.
After the service line enters the home,
usually there's a water meter.
Some communities in Michigan put
the water meter on at the curb box.
I guess it depends how much snow,
and how far south your community is.
I have a few along the Indiana border that do that.
But most communities put the water meter inside
and protect it from freezing.
That determines usage and allows for billing.
And then the plumbing
is distributed to the fixtures in the home.
The fixtures, if you're replacing fixtures,
make sure that the fixtures meet
the tightened lead standard,
the NSF standard 61-G.
You can buy just about anything at Home Depot.
Look for the NSF 61-G certification on it
to make sure you're getting a good clean fixture.
After the water enters the plumbing in the home,
some folks choose to do a home point of use treatment.
And softening is probably the most common.
A water softener, you know,
soft water makes soap lather,
soft water makes laundry clean,
so having a water softener makes sense sometimes,
depending on how hard your water is.
But soft water also tends to be a bit more corrosive,
so be careful with plumbing downstream of the softener.
Other point of use treatment devices
are filters for metals removal.
Again, make sure they're NSF approved
for what they say to be removed.
And then reverse osmosis, many people
like to have reverse osmosis under the kitchen sink
to make coffee and drinking.
Reverse osmosis treated water tends to be
a little bit more corrosive,
so again, be careful with plumbing downstream
of your reverse osmosis unit.
I took questions prior to this, they are posted online,
and the best question was, how do I get
a career in the water field, or waste water field.
And whoever asked that question, please,
see me or Bonifer after this, 'cause we need you.
We're an aging workforce, we're retiring faster
than we can hire, it's just the way it is.
We need more water plant operators,
more waste water operators, more managers, more lab folks.
So if you're considering a career in water, waste water,
it's steady work, and it's not going away. [laughs]
We have some challenges with water supply.
I like this slide because, you know,
the lamprey's ugly I guess.
But the aquatic nuisance species
are entering the great lakes,
we're still dealing with effects from the zebra mussel.
And that started clogging water intakes in the late 1980s.
We have to add chlorine, now,
out at the water intake to keep them off,
or some other sort of chemicals.
So there's that treatment aspect,
but they really changed the dynamics of the lake.
They've made water clearer, deeper.
Clearer and deeper has allowed algae to grow
at depths that we weren't used to,
and that algae can have taste and odors
that are a struggle at the water plant.
So if you drink surface water,
and in August and September,
you notice your water tastes like a dirty gym sock,
you can thank the zebra mussel for that.
Okay, if you have any questions,
call your local water utility.
They know your water the best,
and they welcome your questions,
and a lot of them use questions and complaints
as a form of make decisions,
so they need your information.
Again, the Consumer Confidence Report
comes out every year from your utility,
and it'll tell you how to contact
and participate in the public hearing process.
It'll also tell you about your source water,
and all the contaminants that they tested for
from the previous year.
If you don't live on municipal water,
you have your home well,
contact your county health department,
or your regional health department,
and they can tell you specifically
about the area of where you live.
You're welcome to call the DEQ
Environmental Assistance Center,
an operator in Lansing will take the pertinent info,
and route it out to the district,
and then a district engineer like myself
would give you a call.
You could call the EPA Drinking Water Hotline.
Again, sometimes I'll get calls routed from Chicago EPA
through my office, and follow up on them that way.
Or you can get online, and the
American Water Works Association
has excellent information on drinking water.
Well thanks for having me,
and I hope that clears up some misconceptions.
[clapping]