Brigitte is a project engineer with HDR in the Atlanta, GA office with over 5 years of experience delivering a variety of water projects - from potable water treatment to distribution to groundwater remediation. Brigitte has a Bachelors of Environmental Engineering from Duke University, and she is a licensed professional engineer in the state of Georgia.

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With over 20 years of experience focused on drinking water treatment, Stuart is a Vice President with HDR Engineering. He has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Civil Engineering from Auburn University and a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he studied under the direction of Dr. Amit Amirtharajah. Stuart has provided drinking water related engineering and consulting services across Alabama during his career, while also serving as a global resource on a variety of water treatment related projects across the United States and from Australia to South America.

There is no question that unpleasant taste and/or odor in drinking water can create negative water quality perception challenges for water utilities. Though taste and odor are not health concerns, consumers still are likely to notice and voice their concerns. Two biological constituents that frequently cause taste and odor (T&O)  problems — geosmin and methyl isoborneol (MIB) — are present in surface water sources, and are byproducts of excessive algae growth and subsequent die-off of both algae and other biological constituents. Given changes in many watersheds and increased development that has resulted in additional stormwater runoff, many utilities are experiencing more frequent and more intense T&O episodes.

A number of treatment options are available to address T&O, ranging from mitigation measures at source water locations, to pretreatment injection of powdered activated carbon or certain types of filtration further along in the treatment train. Many utilities are opting for an advanced treatment strategy consisting of ozone and hydrogen peroxide injection combined with biofiltration at a later stage in the treatment cycle.

This presentation will draw upon lessons learned from utilities across the southeastern United States who have dealt with extreme T&O excursions and illustrate the vast array of solutions that utilities can employ as a single tool or in combination with other treatment processes to ensure that customers continue to receive high quality, aesthetically pleasing water.  In particular, this presentation will share bench-scale, pilot-scale, and full-scale results from multiple utilities to demonstrate how those utilities have utilized processes from ozonation to the combination of ozonation with peroxide to biological filtration to carbon-based adsorption approaches.

Through presenting the best practices developed by peer utilities dealing with extreme T&O issues in their drinking water, water industry professionals in Alabama and Mississippi will learn about scalable approaches to solve complex T&O problems that can be incorporated into existing treatment facilities and fit into any capital budget - and ultimately, ensure that customers continue to be pleased with their drinking water.