AWWA IMTECH57869

Compliance with the United States Safe Drinking Water Act requires that water purveyors take water quality samples at entry points to the distribution system as well as at various points within their water distribution system. These samples must be analyzed for a variety of constituents and each constituent has its own required sampling frequency. An individual constituent/location combination may be in one of several monitoring modes: initial, routine, increased, reduced or waiver. The monitoring mode depends, in part, on the historical concentrations recorded for the particular water quality constituent at a particular location. Development of a schedule for monitoring the water quality of a water system is a complex task that most water systems conduct manually. Failure to monitor at the proper intervals may result in a violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act and potentially the receipt of Notices of Violations and fines from the regulator. A computer program was developed for a City water purveyor in the state of Arizona to capture the monitoring rules of the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act along with State and Maricopa County regulations. This program uses the rules to analyze historical water quality data and develop the monitoring schedule. The program was also designed to integrate with the City's existing water quality database. The Water CARS Drinking Water Compliance database scheduler provides this Arizona utility with an insurance policy that does not replace human knowledge of regulations, but provides an additional tool to assess past compliance (e.g., 3rd party audit capabilities) and helps ensure future compliance. Includes tables, figures.