American Water Works Association's interactive CD

Journal of Environmental Health, Sept, 2008

The American Water Works Association (AWWA) now has available an interactive CD entitled How Water Works: An Interactive Tour. Take a virtual, interactive tour of a city water system on the new interactive CD version of the popular How Water Works illustrative series from AWWA's Opflow magazine. The CD provides active links that take you through the processes, equipment, and technology of a typical water supply and wastewater treatment system.

The CD shows the entire process:

* piping of raw water from rivers and other water sources to the water treatment plant;

* treatment of raw water using filtration and disinfection processes to make it potable;

* transport of the potable water by pipes to finished water storage facilities;

* distribution via water mains to homes, businesses, and fire hydrants;

* movement of used water through pipes to the wastewater treatment plant;

* treatment of the wastewater to a near potable state; and

* piping of treated wastewater to a receiving body of water, such as a river, where the process repeats itself.

Rolling your mouse over numbered areas of the illustration displays brief descriptions of the various parts of the system. Clicking on a number displays a close-up, cutaway illustration and detailed explanation of the technology being used. How Water Works: An Interactive Tour is great for informing consumers, and is an excellent training tool for new water or wastewater utility employees, students, and public officials. You can also load the CD on your utility's Web site, so it is accessible by employees and consumers, too. The CD can be used royalty free.

A companion workbook is also available: How Water Works Workbook (No. 70146) is the ideal training companion to How Water Works: An Interactive Tour CD-ROM. The workbook contains all the individual large-scale images and explanatory copy of the interactive CD, plus room for notes, making it useful for training students, utility employees, and public officials in how water works. Visit www.AWWA.org/bookstore for additional information and ordering.