COVID-19 in CA Webinar: What We're Learning About the Coronavirus and Disinfection

Webinar #4 in our series COVID-19 in California

The experts tell us the coronavirus is here to stay. How do water reuse and wastewater professionals fine tune their treatment processes to better deactivate/remove virus to protect themselves and their community? Is there even infectious virus in wastewater?

Three experts in wastewater disinfection will dive into the world of regulations, research and operations to explore what we know and what we are learning about the coronavirus and disinfection.

Brian Bernados, a water reuse Technical Specialist with the State Water Board, will review current regulations, what we know about deactivating viruses and the importance of meeting State permits. He’ll touch on the disinfection technologies used in California. He’ll  cover in more detail chlorine and UV disinfection and ways to monitor the effectiveness of your system.

Andy Salveson is the Water Reuse Practice Director for Carollo and will cover what scientists know about virus removal in treatment systems. He’ll provide an update on what researchers are learning. He’ll also go over important considerations for worker safety and how each stage in the treatment process is important to reducing risk.

Ben Zwart is a Field Services Specialist for Trojan UV and will review several important steps and practices operators need to keep in mind to ensure their UV system is running at maximum efficacy and efficiency.

We’ll have plenty of time for audience Q&A so you can ask questions or share what you’re doing. Moderator John Robinson will share your questions during the Q&A.

Background

According to WEF, scientific research points to three things we do know at this early stage:

There is no evidence of viable cornavirus in wastewater systems. RNA indicators are found in wastewater and at treatment plants but it has yet to be shown the virus is still infectious.
There is no evidence yet of transmission via the fecal-oral route.
Enveloped virus, such as the coronavirus, are thought to be more fragile and more susceptible to disinfectants than their non-enveloped enteric counterparts (WEF and Gerrity-SNWA et al fact sheet). 

Read more on WEF’s coronavirus page or CWEA’s worker safety round-up page.

It’s also helpful to keep in mind the State’s Title 22 definitions for virus removal, “A disinfection process that, when combined with the filtration process, has been demonstrated to inactivate and/or remove 99.999 percent of the plaqueforming units of F-specific bacteriophage MS2, or polio virus in the wastewater.  A virus that is at least as resistant to disinfection as polio virus may be used for purposes of the demonstration.”