AWWA WQTC62386

Drinking water distribution systems reach the majority of American homes, business and civic areas, and are therefore an attractive target for terrorist attack via direct contamination, or backflow events. Instrumental monitoring of such systems may be used to signal the presence of contaminants in drinking water. There is a need to understand how and if instrumentation can be used to sense contaminant introduction. Tests of instruments were run on a simulated distribution system at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Test and Evaluation (T&E) Facility in Cincinnati, Ohio, using potential chemical threat agents. There is a need to process data in real time to provide an early warning of the change of water quality due to the presence of contaminants. There is also a need to provide an indication of what classification (group or class) of chemical may be present in the water sample. Data from the USEPA tests were passed through a set of Hach Homeland Security Technology (HST) algorithms to determine if such alarm outputs could be obtained. The results show that the milligram-per-liter (mg/L) concentrations of chemicals yielded enough response to provide an early warning alarm. The results may also be useful in classifying and estimating the chemical concentration in the water sample. Includes 6 references, figures.