Boston water quality

BobC

i just got a copy of the latest water quality report from the MWRA. This sb good for any community in the metro Boston area that gets treated water from them, the table is on page 9 of the enclosed report.

Bob

Jamie Hall

All things considered, it's really amazing how good the water quality is from the three big New England/New York water suppliers -- Boston MWRA, Hartford's MDC, and New York. It really isn't hard, though, to figure out why: all three of them have carefully protected, mostly self-owned watersheds. It helps...

EBEBRATT-Ed

LOL Those of us in Western, MA. have been complaining about Boston "stealing" our water from Quabbin since the dam went up in 1940

Liam659

It is necessary to look at documents with actual indicators about the content of nutrients in the water, and not what they say in words
For example, my water is hard, and our measures say that everything is normal, although data from independent sources and different parts of the city confirm that there is a lot of iron in the water.

Leonard

They have a nice aqueduct system for getting water from Quabbin to Boston....... water flow is passive ( gravity flow) , no pumps.

As part of aqueduct there is even a means to move valves and let water from a river fall into aqueduct to recharge back of Quabbin lake. That water is naturally cleaned during it's 1 year flow to other side of lake to go to Boston

Jamie Hall

EBEBRATT-Ed said:

LOL Those of us in Western, MA. have been complaining about Boston "stealing" our water from Quabbin since the dam went up in 1940

That land transaction still rankles. Western Connecticut has the same sort of thing with the MDC -- the land for the Barkhamsted and Nepaug Reservoirs. It's a little earlier in time (1930 and 1905 respectively). The way we look at it though is that we wound up with a lot of open space (about 30,000 acres) which would otherwise be subdivisions, and it turns out that our taxes are less than they would have been if it had all been developed. New York does it a little differently -- their land protection is through easements, rather than purchase. A pretty substantial chunk of the Catskills is protected by various agricultural only easements.

EBEBRATT-Ed

@Leonard,

That is quite an aqueduct. The problem is it leaks and has been leaking for years. If fact, more water is lost from leaks than the City of Boston uses

BobC

We are blessed with good rainfall in the northeast and global warming means we will see more of it here.

That aqueduct will never really get fixed - to much labor involved. It will get patched up till it falls down.

Bob

Leonard

I think all, or most of it, is an underground tunnel

hot_rod

That is a comprehensive report, good ph and alkalinity for steam, very low hardness.

No mention of TDS, total dissolved solids. It is possible to have soft water but still high TDS which is a concern for boiler surfaces and scaling. Chlorides often from road chemicals can show as high TDS as well as lawn and ag fertilizer shown up as high nitrates, phosphates, potassium, etc. the TDS, ph alkalinity are the best numbers to watch for boiler specific water.

BobC

@hot_rod If you look towards the end of the analysis table there is a listing for TDS. For my area treated tapwater is 140mg/L.

Bob