Environmental, financial and quality assessment of drinking water processes at Waternet

Abstract Waternet (formerly Amsterdam Water Supply) has been seeking a sustainable scenario for producing drinking water and offering services that fulfill the requirements of clients and regulations, and, at the same time, maintains a sound environmental performance while keeping costs as low as possible. Presently, the company is in the process of evaluating alternatives for the treatment of water that cause the least financial and environmental impacts. The quantification of these impacts, for the current conditions, was carried out in earlier investigations. However, until now, the water quality aspect was not yet considered. In order to include this water quality aspect into the financial and environmental assessment, a quality function was constructed created by comparing water quality parameter values for a current and an alternative treatment process. Four qualifications were assigned to the sum of these scores: “Worse”, “Same”, “Better” and “Much better”. The qualifications allowed the comparison of the water quality and the financial and environmental impacts of the selected alternatives using a graphical representation of them. The method was applied focusing on the environmental and financial assessment of six alternative processes for the Loenderveen–Weesperkarspel treatment line, and including the quality aspect, as a third parameter for comparison.