Over the past four years, the Plainfield Charter Township Water Treatment Plant has been using granular activated carbon (GAC) filtration to meet all water quality regulations while also removing PFAS from its municipal water supply. Having successfully retrofitted all of its traditional sand filters to GAC filtration, Plainfield’s drinking water was selected as Michigan’s 2022 best-tasting municipal water in two separate contests held by the Michigan Rural Water Association (MRWA) and the American Water Works Association’s Michigan Section (AWWA-MI). The winner of each of these Best Tasting Water Awards is selected by a panel of judges who assess the entries based on appearance, smell, and taste.
Plainfield Charter Township will move on to represent Michigan and compete against other Best Tasting Water Award state winners at the AWWA national competition in San Antonio on June 14, 2022 and at the MRWA national competition in Washington D.C. in February of 2023.
Award Winning Water for the Community
In 2018, Plainfield Township partnered with Prein&Newhof to study the effectiveness of GAC filtration for its municipal water supply’s PFAS contamination issues. This 20-month study included intensive analytical testing to prove that GAC was able to meet all current regulations and goals while also being highly effective at removing PFAS compounds. GAC successfully removes total organic carbon (TOC) which decreases trihalomethane (THM) production and can also improve taste and odor.
This knowledge led to retrofitting all the Water Treatment Plant’s traditional sand filters to GAC filtration over the next few years. Today, Plainfield’s Water Department can produce up to 16 million gallons of award-winning water per day using GAC filtration. With the aid of GAC filtration, PFAS is now nearly non-detectable in Plainfield’s water supply and is well below the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) allowable level for safe drinking water. This GAC filtration system uses activated carbon to adsorb contaminants—PFAS, bacteria, pathogens—and other unwanted elements from drinking water.
Prein&Newhof is working with Plainfield Charter Township to extend its municipal drinking water system to about 1,000 homes in Plainfield and Algoma Townships with varying levels of PFAS-contaminated private well water. The 2022 construction season is the third of the four years planned to install about 25 miles of new watermain to reach these properties.
Congratulations to our friends and colleagues at Plainfield Charter Township for turning a significant challenge into an award-winning outcome!