Strengths and Limitations of the Water Treatment Plant Design
Surface water tends to be highly contaminated especially due to the magnitude of impurities that the water is exposed to. For order to ensure noting is left into chances in as far as jeopardizing the health of the consumers is concerned (approximately 75,000 consumers), a thorough water treatment mechanism needs to be embraced. The water treatment options that are embraced may vary depending on the cost, the location of the surface water and more importantly, the nature of the raw water. For this reason, the initial design of the water treatment plant needs to can carefully considered by the engineers. Nevertheless, the selected water treatment plant design encompasses a number of strengths and limitations.
The Strengths of the Selected Design
• The design of the water treatment plant ensured that all contaminants, ranging from debris and lethal chemicals are removed, making the water safer for human consumption.
• Each of the units of the water treatment plant was structured through in-depth consideration of the amount of water needed and the available physical and technical resources.
• Most of the units has been effectively designed to fulfill the intended purpose. For example, the design of the sedimentation tank meet critical factors such as the length to width ratio, the flow velocity, retention and the surface overflow rate. The length of the sedimentation tank is smaller compared to its height, and this ensures that the flocs and sediments slowly settles at the base of the tank, leaving the clean water on top.
• The design of the water treatment plant also ensures efficient use of land, and considering that land is a rare resource in the modern day and age, efficient use of space to reap maximum benefits is encouraging.
The Limitations of the Selected Design
• During the rainy season, the level of contaminants finding their way into the water treatment plant may be high that what each unit of its design had initially been planned for. The resulting impact is that through treatment of the water will not be achieved, and this may jeopardize the health of the consumers.
• Chlorination was embraced as the effective method of treating the raw surface water. Despite the fact that this disinfection method is capable of doing away with most of the disease causing agents, it does not manage to decompose some disease causing agents such as cryptosporidium. For this reason, there is need for the current design to be amended in order to accommodate additional methods of disinfection, such as the use of ultra violet rays.
• The turbidity of water might not always be 250 NTU, since it is deemed to fluctuate depending on the level of contamination and season. This means that if water might end up having lower turbidity, there will be excess alum in the water, and this might pose health risks to the consumer.

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