Drinking water treatment: a constantly evolving sector
Since January 2023, the transposition into French law of the Drinking Water Directive of 2020 has modified the quality requirements for drinking and raw water. It has introduced new parameters for health monitoring of distributed water and removed others.
There are standards (quality limits) for certain substances such as PFAS, pesticides and their metabolites; and vigilance thresholds for certain parameters that are monitored to obtain information on their presence, without standards.
In recent years, the concentration of micropollutants in the environment, linked to their non-biodegradability, has made them easier to detect and analyse. Analysis techniques have also improved, making it possible to lower detection thresholds.
The operators of drinking water treatment plants have a duty of care to guarantee the safety of the water supplied to consumers. During the potabilisation process, the aim is now to optimise existing refining treatments (such as activated carbon, for example), and to test more radical solutions such as nanofiltration or low-pressure reverse osmosis.
Although technically effective for the majority of substances, these technologies do not have only advantages:
- The fate of the concentrates (waste resulting from the treatment) poses a problem: what should be done with them?
- The cost of these processes is high, making these solutions impractical for all water services.
CFME expert trainers mobilised
Our team of "Drinking Water Treatment" trainers regularly have to adapt the content of their courses to meet these new requirements. There is strong demand from professionals in the sector, with the introduction of new treatments leading to the need for new skills. So our experts need to assimilate and pass on knowledge as and when scientific discoveries are made.
To complement this work, our booklet on the quality parameters of water intended for human consumption (EDCH) has just been updated.
With around twenty additional pages, almost 100 parameters are presented in the form of individual sheets, useful for operators involved in the production, monitoring or control of EDCH.