How water is collected, treated and transported
Project Manager at New Jersey American Water. He holds degrees in environmental management and environmental engineering.
Water might be called the "hidden utility." It can be taken for granted. If the lights don't come on when we flip the switch or the gas stove doesn't light when we want to cook dinner, it's an immediate problem for our household. Our water supply, it seems, is different. It's always there, for most of us in the United States in the twenty-first century. It's not a problem unless there is a system failure of some kind.
We can get by without microwaves and even without hot water. But life itself depends on clean water that we can drink safely. That puts water in a special category.
PUF Editor-in-Chief Steve Mitnick recently toured the Delaware River Regional Water Treatment Plant with New Jersey American Water's Eric Hahn. Hahn described how water is collected, treated, and transported.
There are many forces at work that bring water to a customer's home. Most of the infrastructure lies underground. Customers usually don't take the time to think about how water gets to their homes. It's buried. It's out of sight, out of mind.
Customers easily see a pothole or a tree that has fallen in the street. They don't see the water infrastructure that they're depending on. There are pipes and valves under or near the street that people don't notice.