The Portland Water Bureau (PWB), in Portland, Oregon, is evaluating available on-line water
quality monitoring technologies and Event Detection Systems for application in an on-line water
quality network in the distribution system. To date, the PWB has installed instrument suites at
six locations in its distribution system with a focus on Portland's in-town open finished water
reservoirs. The purpose of the monitoring network is to better understand water quality at these
critical locations to improve both operations and security until the LT2 requirements for open
finished water reservoirs are met. The basic instrument suites include the parameters of total
chlorine, pH, turbidity, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, and temperature.
One of these locations, the outlet of a 49 MG open finished water reservoir (and the inlet to
another 35 MG open reservoir), is being used to evaluate multiple technologies: the Hach
Guardian Blue system, and the S::CAN Spectro::lyser (UV-Vis-Spectrometer) with ana::larm
software. While this study is ongoing, current results include an analysis of the continuous data quality, online
data comparisons to routine grab samples, and lessons learned from installation to regular
operation and maintenance of on-line water quality monitoring equipment. Includes 3 references, tables, figures.