Worcester Municipal Water Filtration System (click photos)

Over 2.5 billion people in the world lack access to sanitary water. As a result millions of people die every year due to water related illness. Living and going to school in Worcester we enjoy some of the highest quality water in the world. The Worcester Water Filtration Plant filters about 22 million gallons of water every day by collecting water from 10 reservoirs (containing 8 billion gallons) located throughout the Blackstone and Nashua River Watersheds, running it through a 10-step filtration process, and then using gravity and pumps to deliver it through 600 miles of piping to Worcester and surrounding towns. Worcester water meets every EPA Safe Drinking Water Act standard, with the exception of a few detected cases of lead due to old piping in homes ( the solution to which is to simply run the faucet for at least 30 seconds to flush out stagnant water before filling up larger water containers). Click on Worcester’s Water Quality Report 2006 below, for a detailed report.

Worcester Water Quality Report 2006

Photos clockwise from top left.

1) Holden Reservoir #1 (729 Million Gallons) view to the south. 2) Water entering the plant. Students look down into the mirrored plant designed 2 60 in. diameter intake pipes, each of which have a rated capacity of 50 MGD.3) Air must be dessicated to prevent corrosion of ozone generating tubes. 4) Students looking into a $300,000 ozone generator used to break down organic membranes thus disinfecting and improving the taste of water. 5) View of ozone generating tubes: long glass tubes with metal coating conducting electricity contact pressurized dry air to break apart O2 and then form O3 (ozone), which is a ground level lung irritant and smog forming compound but in the upper atmosphere a UV ray absorbing compound as well as effective water sanitizer. 6) Excess O3 is converted back to O2. 7) Flocculation, slow mixing with aluminum sulfate and ionic polymer to create flocs that will be unable to pass through the next step. Students look down into a direction filtration tank where 5.3 gallons of water per square foot per minute are being filtered through five feet of anthracite coal, one foot of sand, and one foot of gravel. 9) A graph shows the difference in turbidity (measure of cloudiness) as result coagulation (rapid mixing) and flocculation.