Drinking Water - Eastern Municipal Water District

Your Drinking Water
Eastern Municipal Water District’s (EMWD) primary
role is to provide you and your family with high quality
drinking water that meets or surpasses all healthbased drinking water standards that are set by the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and enforced
by the California Department of Public Health.
Safety
EMWD produces an annual water quality report that
documents that the water served to all EMWD users
meets state and federal drinking water standards.
To obtain a copy of the
most recent water quality
report, visit www.emwd.
org or call (951) 928-3777
ext. 4226.
As part of our commitment
to providing safe and
reliable drinking water
service, now and in the
future, EMWD has highly
trained employees to
vigilantly monitor and test
the water we serve at our
state-certified laboratory.
A few specialized tests are performed by other
certified laboratories. EMWD’s water quality
staff monitors for more than 100 regulated and
unregulated chemicals.
Eastern Municipal Water District
Information About Your
For more information
EMWD posts a variety of
fact sheets, frequently asked
questions, and the annual
Consumer Confidence Report
online. These items offer useful
and important information about
the sources and quality of
EMWD’s drinking water, as well
as regulations and programs
that protect your health.
Drinking
Water
www.emwd.org/waterquality
(951) 928-3777 ext. 6337
If for some reason your water did not meet the
health and safety regulations, you would be
notified immediately!
Eastern Municipal Water District
2270 Trumble Road, Perris, CA 92570
(951) 928-3777
www.emwd.org
Taste/Odor & Appearance
EMWD blends more than 35
different sources of water together
in its distribution system. As a result,
water can taste, smell, and even
look different depending on where
it’s coming from and how it’s treated.
The following are some of the common issues
throughout EMWD’s service area and helpful hints for
resolving some of them...
Taste/Odor
• Chlorine is one of the most commonly perceived
tastes or smells associated with municipal water
and is the result of the treatment process to prevent
harmful bacteria from contaminating water.
HELPFUL HINT: Let water sit in a glass or
other container for a few minutes and/or drink
refrigerated water. Cold water usually tastes and
smells better than water at room temperature.
Other factors which affect taste include your own
plumbing:
• Your pipes can cause a metallic flavor, especially if
you haven’t been home for several days.
HELPFUL HINT: Run your faucets to flush your
pipes if you haven’t been home for several days.
• Other odors, such as a rotten egg or sulfur smell,
may actually be coming from your sink drain where
bacteria grow on materials that get trapped in your
drains, and produces gasses that smell. Those
gasses get stirred up when water flows into the pipe.
HELPFUL HINT: You may wish to have your sink
drain traps cleaned.
• A rotten egg or sulfur smell could also be from sulfate
that is present in the water supply. A water heater
that is not properly maintained or lacks sufficient
water circulation can contribute to this odor.
HELPFUL HINT: Consult your water heater
manufacturer for proper maintenance and
cleaning instructions.
• Water that has a lot of minerals in it can convey a
salty taste.
Appearance
• In the summer months, algal blooms which occur
with surface water storage can result in a musty
taste and odor.
• Customers often say their tap water
looks “cloudy.” In most cases, the
cloudy appearance is due to tiny air
bubbles that pose no health risk.
EMWD assures you that these are not health
hazards. Most taste and odor concerns are seasonal
and resolved within one to two weeks.
Ultrafiltration is a membrane filtration process where
water must pass through tiny pores in several layers
• Calcium and magnesium can cause white spots
when water dries on dishes and other surfaces.
• Lime and rust deposits are commonly due to older
water heaters.
• Occasionally particles such as sand get stirred up
in large water pipelines during repairs and end up
in your home’s pipelines.
HELPFUL HINT: Allow particles to settle and
then run your faucets to flush the particles out
of your pipelines.
If the problem persists, please contact our staff at
(951) 928-3777 ext. 6265.
HELPFUL HINT: Let the water sit in a glass for a
few minutes and it will clear up.
How EMWD Treats Your Drinking Water
EMWD operates two fresh water filtration plants one in Hemet and one in Perris. Both plants receive
water from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California via the Colorado River Aqueduct or the State
Water Project (Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta water).
Both plants use advanced treatment processes with
the latest technologies, including ultrafiltration and
ultraviolet (UV) light disinfection (UV is used at Perris
facility only) to maximize safety while reducing costs
and protecting the environment.
• Minerals like iron and manganese
naturally occur in well water
and can cause red and black
stains on your dishes and
sinks, or occasionally make
the water the color of iced tea.
EMWD
adds
polyphosphates
(naturally
occurring minerals which are mined from rocks
and combined with other elements) to well water
to reduce discoloration. There is no health risk
associated with this issue.
of materials. The pores in the fiber are so small that
impurities and bacteria in the raw water are too large
to pass through. UV disinfection is a treatment process
where water is exposed to a network of lamps that emit
UV light, essentially killing any remaining organisms
left in the water after the ultrafiltration process. While
there are no known organisms that are resistant to UV
disinfection, EMWD still uses chlorine as an added
disinfection method.
EMWD also operates two desalter units to convert
otherwise unusable salty groundwater into drinking
water through a reverse osmosis process. In addition
to reducing demand for imported water from the
Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta and the Colorado
River, EMWD’s Desalination Program assists with
salinity management in the area to allow for the
expansion of water recycling and the protection of
high-quality ground water.
In addition to state-of-the-art treatment, EMWD’s
laboratory tests more than 7,000 water samples and
performs more than 46,000 water quality tests on
those samples throughout the year for contaminants
such as arsenic, nitrates, and disinfection by-products.
For more information, unfold to see inside pages of
brochure.
The Communities EMWD Serves
Water Filtration Plants
Hemet Water Filtration Plant
Untreated (raw) water is pumped from
the State Water Project in Northern
California into the treatment facility.
Water passes through screens
to filter out large particles.
Coagulation agents are added to water to help form
tiny sticky particles called “floc”
which attract dirt particles.
Lake Perris
Lake Mathews
Water is gently agitated in a floc basin to get
particles to clump together and settle to the bottom
of the basin, making them easy to remove.
Diamond Valley Lake
Canyon Lake
Water goes through ultrafiltration,
pulling it through semipermeable
membrane filters that trap bacteria,
viruses, and other pathogens.
Chlorine is added to the filtered water as a
disinfectant as it enters the contact basin.
Lake Elsinore
Water enters the clear well, a maze-like tank
structure which forces water to travel a specific
path prior to leaving the plant to give chlorine
adequate time to disinfect.
Lake Skinner
13%
Vail Lake
Ammonia is mixed with water before it enters the
finished water pump stations to keep it disinfected
as it travels through EMWD’s water distribution
system and out of your tap.
41%
15%
4%
Perris Water Filtration Plant
Note: The Mills and Skinner Filtration plants are owned and operated by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD).
Desalination Process
Untreated (raw) water is pumped from the
State Water Project in Northern California
into the treatment facility.
Coagulation additives are added to water to help
form tiny sticky particles called “floc”
which attract dirt particles.
EMWD’s Desalination Program produces drinking
water from otherwise unusable brackish groundwater
through two desalter units in Perris and Menifee.
These units provide drinking water for up to 10,000
families annually. A third desalter has been designed
and will also be located in Perris.
Water is put in a pretreatment basin where particles
clump together and settle to the bottom, making them
easy to remove.
As water leaves the pretreatment
basin, untreated (raw) water from
the Colorado River Aqueduct may be pumped in as well.
Brackish water refers to water supplies that are
more salty than freshwater, but much less salty than
seawater. About 97% of the water on earth is too salty
to consume and can only be made drinkable through
desalination technology. Desalination is the process
of separating salt from water.
Water passes through screens
to filter out large particles.
EMWD uses a reverse osmosis process to treat
the brackish water collected from desalter system
wells. This process essentially reverses the natural
flow of water across a semipermeable membrane
to remove impurities—such as an excess amount
of salt—from the water. Desalinated water is
blended with other fresh water sources to
replenish the beneficial balance of minerals
before it is delivered to customers.
Left: Decarbonator at Menifee Desalter.
Top: Reverse osmosis cartridges at Perris Desalter.
Important Information About Water Softeners
The salts from self-regenerating water softeners contribute to
increased salinity in our water supplies, inhibiting water recycling
for irrigation and other uses, as well as impacting beneficial uses,
such as drinking water and agricultural irrigation.
While EMWD’s Desalination Program works to reduce salinity levels
in groundwater, it is less expensive to remove salts at the source!
Reducing the use of residential self-regenerating water
softeners is an important first step toward protecting the quality
of existing water supplies and providing usable recycled water
to address the water needs of California.
More Questions?
Get more information online at www.emwd.org or call our Water Quality staff at (951) 928-3777 ext. 6337
If treating Colorado River Water, polyphosphates
(naturally occurring minerals which are mined
from rocks and combined with other elements)
are added to stabilize water hardness.
Water goes through ultrafiltration, pulling it through
semipermeable membrane filters that trap bacteria,
viruses, and other pathogens.
Water passes through ultraviolet
light disinfection which effectively
destroys bacteria and pathogens such
as Cryptosporidium and Giardia.
As water leaves the ultraviolet light tubes, a small
amount of chlorine is added as a disinfectant.
Water enters the clear well,
a maze like tank structure
which forces water to travel a
specific path prior to leaving
the plant to give chlorine
enough contact time
to disinfect.
Ammonia is mixed with water before it
enters the finished water pump
stations to keep it disinfected as it
travels throughout EMWD’s water
distribution system and out of your tap.
Notes: Groundwater is blended into the distribution system after
chlorination and/or well head treatment. EMWD also receives
treated water from Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California via Mills and Skinner Filtration Plants.