Drinking Water Distribution Systems: Assessing and Reducing Risks

Protecting and maintaining water distributions systems is crucial to ensuring high-quality drinking water. Distribution systems — consisting of pipes, pumps, valves, storage tanks, reservoirs, meters, fittings, and other hydraulic appurtenances designed to carry drinking water from a centralized treatment plant or wells to consumers’ taps — possess a complex and poorly understood ecology.

Spanning almost one million miles in the United States, these systems represent the vast majority of physical infrastructure for water supplies, and constitute the primary management challenge facing water utilities from both an operational and a public health standpoint. Recent data on waterborne disease outbreaks suggest that distribution systems are a source of contamination that has yet to be fully addressed.

Written by a select group of world-renowned industry experts, this comprehensive 404-page book evaluates approaches for risk characterization, presents recent data, and identifies a variety of viable strategies that could be considered to reduce the risks posed by water quality-deteriorating events in water distribution systems. Particular attention is given to backflow events via cross connections, the potential for system contamination during construction and repair activities, maintenance of storage facilities, and the role of premise plumbing in public health risk.