UC Berkeley engineers have created a simple and low-cost new arsenic treatment system to
help low-income communities access safer water.
In many areas throughout California, the groundwater is tainted with dangerous levels of arsenic, a highly carcinogenic element that can seep into the water table from deposits in the soil and bedrock. While cities and larger municipalities can afford to remove arsenic from their water, many people living in small and rural communities are forced to choose between drinking contaminated tap water or purchasing bottled water - and those with private wells may not even know that their water is unsafe.
In collaboration with Rev. Dennis Hutson, Kayode Kadara, and other Allensworth, CA community leaders, engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, are currently field testing a simple and low-cost new arsenic treatment system that is designed to help small, rural communities like Allensworth access arsenic-safe drinking water.
Since early June, the system - housed within a small grey shed on Hutson’s farm - has been
drawing groundwater from Hutson’s agricultural well and reducing its arsenic levels from an
extremely toxic 250 ppb to well below the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) limit of 10
ppb. If the field test continues to be successful, the team hopes to obtain the funding to launch a
pilot plant in the Central Valley...
“An estimated 300,000 people in California are exposed to arsenic concentrations higher than 10 ppb in their drinking water,” said research team leader Ashok Gadgil, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley and senior faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “For the first time, we’ll be treating groundwater with high levels of arsenic at a price local people can afford and in a way that they can operate.”...
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Video by Roxanne Makasdjian, Alan Toth, Adam Lau
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