Clemon grad tracks taste and odor from water drawn from lake

A Clemson University graduate student helped determine what was causing taste and odor problems with drinking water drawn from Hartwell Lake and is working to address them. Tyler Geer, a wildlife and fisheries biology student who has lived in Clemson all of his life, was part of a team that worked with the Anderson Regional Joint Water System to develop and implement a plan to control the source of taste and odor in the lake. The Anderson Regional Joint Water system can treat taste and odor compounds with its water treatment plant, but the problem in the lake got so bad the in-house treatment processes couldn’t keep up. Scott Willett, executive director of the Anderson Joint Water System, said the Clemson researchers helped devise a treatment plan. Identifying the source of the problem was one of the first things the team did. The two compounds causing the problem are naturally occurring alcohols that were being produced by blue-green algae and diatoms. Humans are very sensitive to the compounds and can smell them even at low concentrations, Geer said. The team collected water samples from the Six and Twenty Creek cove where the water intake for Anderson Regional Joint Water System is located. The team took some of the algae back to its lab and found the compounds. The algae are not hazardous to human or animal health, but the algae do produce bad smells and taste. When they reach this level, intervention is required. The management program Geer and his team came up with involved implementing a refined algaecide application plan. By controlling the algae responsible for MIB and geosmin production in the lake itself, the algaecide application would complement in-house processes the Anderson Regional Joint Water System was already using to treat the compounds. The algaecide used is safe for humans and animals.  An algaecide was applied using weighted trailing hoses to the bottom of the water column to “get the algaecide to the algae,” Geer said. That reduced the algae and geosmin so that it was no longer detectable. MIB concentrations remained stable. A second treatment was applied and the MIB level dropped. However, within four weeks of treatment, both MIB and geosmin levels increased to unacceptable levels. Because of the work of Geer and his team, algaecide applications are periodically used to manage taste and odor compounds in the portions of the Six and Twenty Creek cove. The water is continually monitored and tested to keep track of the growth of algae as well as production of MIB and geosmin to determine the most appropriate times to apply the algaecides. A treatment plan for taste and odor control can be found on the Anderson Regional Joint Water System’s website, http://bit.ly/2prKnSy.