The Importance of Cleaning Water Storage Tanks

Safe municipal drinking water has been with us so long that it is easy to forget that even today the World Health Organization estimates that over a billion people do not have access to clean drinking water.  Administrators who manage water systems know that the luxury of having safe drinkable water comes at a cost.  It is a constant struggle to maintain the aging infrastructure and keep up with the most effective water treatment options.

Although water treatment chemicals and treatment methods have taken great leaps forward over the years there is still a basic element of sanitation in our water systems that is often overlooked.  Simple sediment build up in the bottom of a water storage tank can undermine the best plans and most advanced chemical treatments. In a municipal water system sediment builds up over time.  With 10 years of inspecting water storage tanks behind us and thousands of tanks inspected, we have found that three inches of sediment or less is common across Texas, but we have found some tanks with many times that and even multiple feet of sediment.

Keeping your water storage tanks clean may be one of the most overlooked maintenance procedures in the drinking water industry.  Out of sight and out of mind, sediment in the bottom of your water storage tanks is never seen and rarely thought of.   The sediment that builds up in almost all potable water tanks can be a habitat for bacteria and other contaminates like cryptosporidium that devastated the city of Milwaukee in the spring of 1993.

Read the full article here:

https://tankdiver.wordpress.com/importance-of-clean-water-storage-tanks/

See a video of a tank being cleaned by a dive crew here: