Wastewater treatment is one of the most important public services municipal governments oversee, and ensuring that waste is dealt with in an effective manner, and that all citizens have access to high quality drinking water, is a cornerstone responsibility of local government.
But governments that want to ensure the highest standards of water quality face a range of different challenges. In many jurisdictions, pollution is a major concern, and with the global fresh water shortage anticipated to reach crisis levels within the century, it is becoming increasingly important for municipalities across Canada and the United States to be more assiduous about recycling wastewater and replenishing water tables.
While the necessity of doing more to preserve fresh water sources is widely accepted, exploring ways to do so has tended to raise serious questions.
This is in part due to the wide range of demands being placed on water systems. Fresh water is a major component in a variety of industrial processes, including cooling, washing, diluting, and transporting products. Fresh water is also a major requirement for agricultural production, while agricultural runoff is one of the main drivers of pollution in rivers and lakes.
At the core of good wastewater management policy is the understanding that most of our water-related problems will not have easy solutions. Safe, effective processing of wastewater is a complicated process, and doing so in ways that are environmentally responsible often requires innovative approaches that rely on the application of sound scientific principles.
To this end, good wastewater management means finding chemical agents that can ensure high safety standards while also delivering efficient, economical solutions. Many recent breakthroughs in water management have arisen from the application of processes like reverse osmosis to aid in desalination, de-chlorinating and de-ozonation, and PH and alkalinity controls that have helped municipalities strengthen their wastewater treatment practices.
Most of these solutions rely on a regular supply of chemical products, which means that municipal wastewater management corporations are often looking for a water treatment chemical supplier that can provide them with the products they need in a safe, responsible, and affordable way. Such suppliers are essential for finding solutions that are tailored to the particular needs of a community.
According to the latest scientific reports from NASA, we are now draining global freshwater sources faster than they can be replenished — and freshwater consumption and usage is only projected to rise in the coming decades. When coupled with the threat of climate change, and the impact it is already having on freshwater locked into glaciers and ice caps at the poles, this represents an existential threat to human life on earth.
This threat can seem overwhelming, but the reality is that solving this problem will rely on actions taken at the local as well as the global level. Municipalities have a major role to play in applying the latest scientific approaches to wastewater management to their local water supply to ensure that it will continue to sustain life for generations to come.