AWWA CSC94002

Discolored water episodes cause serious liability and public relations problems for many water utilities. When flow conditions within tuberculated pipes change suddenly, iron oxide is dislodged into the flow stream causing laundry staining and other aesthetic problems. Since discolored water problems result from hydraulic conditions, the use of a hydraulic model to predict such problems was investigated. The ability to import model output into a database manager and the ability to perform a travel time analysis were found to be very effective in correlating model results with a major discolored water episode. Using these same capabilities, future conditions will be analyzed to predict and ameliorate discolored water problems.