California: Arsenic Removal from Drinking Water
The goal of this project is to identify communities suffering from arsenic contamination and evaluate if Electro-Chemical Arsenic Remediation (ECAR), or a similar low-cost arsenic removal tool, can be used to improve the quality of their drinking water. Our group, Community Berkeley Arsenic Treatment Team (ComBATT), is specifically targeting small, low-income communities (especially Native American reservations and agricultural communities in the Central Valley) with arsenic-contaminated well water as potential ECAR implementation candidates.
We have worked closely with Caroline Delaire from the Gadgil Lab group to learn how to properly take water samples and how to use an arsenator for rapid arsenic measurements. We made two site visits to Arvin, CA and North Edwards, CA where we spoke with small water system managers, took water samples, and surveyed community members. Moving forward, we plan to synthesize and report our knowledge of key stakeholders in the California drinking water system, identify design constraints of ECAR in the California context, and continue identifying possible sites for our full-scale field prototype. |