联合中心治疗和分配是必要的 相对较新的现象 上个世纪左右的标准。考虑到这一点<1% 经处理的水实际上是被摄入的 将系统中的所有水处理为最佳饮用水 水的规格变得越来越不切实际，尤其是 面对日益严格的法规， 成本高，配送过程中水质恶化， 减少优质水源的获取。 《安全饮用水法案》制定了特殊的 小型系统使用分散系统的机会 通过使用点（POU）和进入点的合规性 （POE）提供补充治疗的技术 用于部分输送的管道水。双层 使用POU或POE的水系统 设备甚至可能是瓶装水提供了一个可行的解决方案 以及经济高效的方式，向公众提供安全用水 消费者。社区管理的分散战略 也为小型系统提供了实现 比这些社区更安全、更优质的饮用水 如果不是这样的话，可能会更快地 合理的成本。 这些替代方法创造了新的物流， 管理、合规、监控和监管 监督问题，但这些问题是可以解决的。大多数 支持小型企业分散解决方案的原则 系统也适用于提供社区管理服务 “饮料质量”饮用水在很多地方 更大的系统。对于所有供水商来说，权力下放 集中治疗组合代表了 更好地利用日益减少的水资源和有限的资源 资助包括19个参考文献，表1。

Combined central treatment and distribution are relatively recent phenomena, having only become standard in the last century or so. Given that <1% of treated water is actually ingested, the concept of treating all of the water in a system to optimal drinking water specifications is becoming more impractical, especially in the face of increasingly stringent regulations, high costs, water quality deterioration during distribution, and reduced access to high-quality source water. The Safe Drinking Water Act has created special opportunities for small systems to use decentralized compliance through point-of-use (POU) and point-of-entry (POE) techniques to provide supplemental treatment for part of the delivered piped water. Two-tier water systems that include the use of POU or POE devices or possibly even bottled water provide a feasible and cost-effective means of delivering safe water to consumers. Community-managed decentralized strategies also offer small systems the opportunity to achieve safer, higher-quality drinking water than these communities might otherwise have had, more quickly and at reasonable costs. These alternative approaches create new logistic, management, compliance, monitoring, and regulatory oversight issues, but these are solvable. Most of the principles supporting decentralized solutions for small systems are also applicable to providing community-managed "beverage-quality" drinking water in much larger systems. For all water providers, decentralized and centralized treatment combinations represent a better use of diminishing water resources and limited finances. Includes 19 references, table.