To achieve the many benefits of AWOP and meet the goals of the program, water systems are encouraged to adopt enhanced plant performance monitoring, reporting, and documentation.  To meet the established goals, EGLE has been emphasizing several aspects of operation for surface water treatment plants.  Now that the program has been active in the State for a few years, EGLE would like to remind surface water treatment plants to consider implementing the following:

• Conventional and direct filtration plants should report the MAXIMUM individual filter effluent turbidity when the filter is in operation for each day.
• Conventional filtration plants should monitor and report the MAXIMUM turbidity measurement from each settled water effluent train.
• In addition to verifying the calibration of each turbidimeter using a primary standard at least once every 90 days, manufacturers' recommended maintenance and cleaning procedures and schedules should be followed.
• Water treatment plants are encouraged to formally adopt national optimization goals for settled and filtered turbidity.
• All shift operators should be familiar with the optimization goals and SOPs should be structured to promote achievement of the goals.

In addition to the aspects listed above, EGLE is also emphasizing the following for surface water treatment plants utilizing membrane filtration:

• Continuously monitor turbidity on the effluent of each individual filter unit (i.e. skid, rack, etc).
• Program the control system to alarm and shutdown the individual filter unit if turbidity reaches 0.15 NTU.
• Ensure each individual filter unit undergoes a direct integrity test (DIT) every day it is in operation.
• Identify the upper control limit of the direct integrity test to raise operator awareness of the pass/fail threshold.
• Include DIT test results (and corresponding log removal values if available) and daily MAXIMUM turbidity of each individual filter unit on monthly operation reports.