Water School

Raw water is ground or surface water that is taken directly from its source without treatment. Typically, most water is considered to be raw until it is treated by a potable water treatment process.

While water treatment plants can remove some chemicals, at this time, wastewater systems are not designed to remove pharmaceuticals.  At this point, the best way to reduce the number of chemicals in our water is at their source.Pharmaceuticals enter the water cycle through a variety of sources including drugs that pass through the human body or domestic animals that are not completely absorbed and byproducts of the pharmaceutical manufacturing process.Additionally, improper disposal of old ...

Desalination is the process of removing dissolved minerals (including total dissolved solids, chlorides, and others) from water to produce potable water for human consumption or fresh water for industrial use. The two most popular methods are thermal and membrane technologies.In the thermal process, salty water is heated to make vapor, which is condensed and collected as fresh water leaving the minerals behind. Membrane processes use high pressure to filter water through permeable membranes...

The woody, musty, earthy taste that shows up from time to time in our drinking water is normally due to natural causes. The main culprit: algae. When blue-green algae end their lifecycle they emit an oily substance called geosmin, which has a distinctive earthy taste that humans can detect in even small concentrations. While this added flavor in drinking water can be annoying, it poses no health hazard.While water utilities have long worked to reduce the prevalence of the offensive taste and odo...

The mineral content determines whether your elements' water is either “hard” or “soft.”  The higher the mineral content, the harder the water. Minerals affecting water hardness can include calcium and magnesium bicarbonate or calcium sulfate, calcium chloride, magnesium sulfate and magnesium chloride.The harder the water, the more soap is needed to make foam or lather. Hard water also produces scale in hot water pipes, heaters, boilers and other places where the ...

The Brazos River Authority owns and operates the East Williamson County Regional Water System serving the cities of Taylor, Hutto and Thrall, the Jonah Special Utilities District and the Nowak Water Supply Company. The BRA also contracts to operate the Sandy Creek Water Treatment Plant in Leander and the Lee County Fresh Water Supply District No. 1, serving the community of Dime Box.