Monthly Blog

September 8, 2016

Lead and Copper Year

In 2016 the summer Olympics were held in Rio. On the Chinese calendar, 2016 is the year of the monkey. In the United States, 2016 is a presidential election year. Here in Aurora, it is the year of lead and copper.

 

Here in the drinking water world some of our regulations are different than in the waste water world. We are required to monitor the distribution system for lead and copper levels in the water. The frequency of this monitoring varies with each utility based on the monitoring plan established by the governing body, in our case the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment.

 

The sampling is regulated by the lead and copper rule. A common source of lead and copper is the pipes in the home. Some older homes have lead service lines or copper pipes with lead solder. Water being a great dissolver, can leach these metals from pipes. A number of water quality parameters can be controlled to prevent leaching of metals from the pipes into the water.  One tool that can be used is the Langolier Index. Based on a formula, this number takes into consideration water quality factors, such as pH, alkalinity, and hardness to determine the likelihood of the water corroding the pipes and leaching metals into the water.

 

This year Aurora Water is conducting a lead and copper study. After what happened in Michigan, this is a hot topic, and water customers are significantly more aware of the quality of their water. This awareness motivates more customers to participate in the study.

 

In previous years it was a challenge to obtain the 50 samples without repeated customer contacts. This year is different, the response has been great.  In our third week, we had almost received all of the required samples. 

 

The study involves a few steps:

·        Notify customers – We send a letter notifying the customers on the pool list that we are conducting a lead and copper study and request their participation.  The majority of the samples are collected in July but we are flexible with the customers as long as the collection is within our study window.

·        Deliver bottles and instructions – This is time consuming and labor intensive.  A bottle is delivered to each home and placed in a secure but visible place.  The instructions for filling the bottle are included on a chain of custody form that the sampler must sign and write in the date and time the sample was taken.

·        Sampling – We are required to maintain a pool of at least 100 homes and we have to receive a minimum of 50 samples back for analysis. The sample has to be a first draw sample, after the water has been sitting in the pipes for at least 6 hours. This is the reason the customers take their own samples. This year many of our regular participants have moved so we have reached out to the new customers to make sure they understand the process so that the samples are taken correctly. 

·        Collect bottles – Once the sample is collected the customer will call and let us know. We will have any employees in the area pick-up the sample and bring it back to the lab. 

·        Analyze samples – The samples will be analyzed for turbidity, lead, and copper. The turbidity is taken when the sample is received in the lab. If the turbidity is greater than 1 the sample has to be digested prior to analysis. The sample is preserved with nitric acid and held at room temperature until it is analyzed.

·        Notify customers of results – Once the results are peer reviewed and QC checked the customers are notified of the results from the water tested from their at their home.

·        Report results to the state – Once all of the sample are analyzed the results are compiled and reported to the state health department

The action level for lead is 0.015 mg/L and copper is 1.3 mg/L. Results at this level are not an automatic violation. The results are ranked in order from smallest to largest. If the 90^th percentile is above the action level that is referred to as an action level exceedance. Exceedances will result in increased monitoring frequencies. Corrosion studies may also be mandated.

 

Customers will be anticipating the results of the analysis of the water in their homes. As our study concludes this month, we are hopeful that 2016 will not turn into the year of routine monitoring for lead and copper.

Adele Rucker is the metals analyst for Aurora's Water Quality Control Laboratory.

 

August 22, 2016

Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) Purchasing Process

 

Purchasing a laboratory information management system can be a daunting and overwhelming task. You start asking yourself these questions:

 

       1.    Where do I start?

       2.    What do I really need?

       3.    How much will it cost?

       4.    Who will help set it up?

       5.    What features do I need/want?

       6.    Will it really be everything that I want it to be?

 

Don’t let these questions scare you away from the purchase. Our laboratory purchased our first LIMS in 2001. Prior to that, we entered all of our data in excel spreadsheets. Excel spreadsheets work great until your boss starts coming to you with requests for data from 5 years ago and they want the monthly averages, maximums, and minimums. Or they want to compare the total suspended solids from January 2010 to January 2016. You can retrieve that data from excel spreadsheets but it may take hours or days to locate and calculate the data. A LIMS is a powerful data storage warehouse that can hold years of data. The data is readily available with just a few keystrokes on the computer. In 2001, our laboratory was in need of a better system, so we purchased our first LIMS. It worked great for many years, but in 2014, we decided that we needed a more powerful system that both our environmental and wastewater laboratories could purchase and use together.  

 

In 2014, we started researching LIMS vendors and set-up several web demos. We wanted a system that would work for both labs as well as fitting our individual needs. For example, our wastewater laboratory needed a system that would be able to interface with our operations and industrial pretreatment databases, and the environmental lab needed an application that was capable of entering data in the field. We all met as a group and mapped out the current LIMS flow and how we wanted the future LIMS to flow through each step from sample log-in to reporting. This identified areas that we wanted to streamline throughout the process.

 

During this time, we brought our IT department into the discussion since they would play a major part in installing and maintaining the system. They assisted with the request for proposal and were involved every step of the way. Below is a detailed timeline for this project:

• April 2015- Request for proposal was issued
• May 12, 2015- Pre-proposal conference with vendors to discuss specifications
• May 19, 2015- Questions from vendors were due
• June 9, 2015- Request for proposals were due
• July 7, 2015- Demonstrations from vendors (on-line)
• July-October 2015- Worked with IT and City Attorney to draft contract and completed the Council memo.  
• September 2015- Created a LIMS administration team which consisted of employees from the wastewater lab, environmental lab, and IT; the team met bi-weekly throughout the process
• October 27, 2015- Council approved the purchase of the new LIMS
• November 10, 2015- Kickoff meeting with new LIMS vendor, LIMS administrator, IT, purchasing and implementation team
• November 15, 2015- Conference call with the vendor’s project manager and the City’s LIMS administrator to discuss the project schedule and items that we needed to submit to the vendor such as: new client checklists, static data tables, and instrument interfaces
• December 2015- Static data tables were uploaded to the vendor’s ftp site
• January 2016- New LIMS was installed on the administrator’s computer; initiated bi-weekly conference calls with LIMS administrator and vendor
• February 2-4, 2016- First on-site training and system set-up
• March 8-10, 2016- Second on-site visit and training with the vendor; training on sample entry, quality control, label printing, calculations, and initial set-up of instrument interfaces
• April 5-8, 2016- Third on-site training which was customized for each lab; additional work on software and instrument interfaces, label printing, calculations, and mobile devices
• April-June 2016- Staff parallel tested the new system with the old system; started using the barcode scanners, auto-logging samples, and working with the instrument and software interfaces
• June 29, 2016- Vendor removed practice data in the new LIMS
• July 1, 2016- Stopped logging in samples in the old system and started entering samples in the new system
• August 2016- IT uploaded old databases to the vendor’s ftp site and 10 years of data will be archived
• September 2016- Four analysts will travel to the vendor’s headquarters for four days of on-site training

There is still work to be done, but we are enjoying all the new features that our LIMS has to offer. When you think of taking the plunge, just remember that it can be a long journey but a journey well worth taking.  

 

Lesa Julian is the Wastewater Laboratory Supervisor for the City and County of Broomfield.