All of us at Water Testing Blog already KNOW the dangers of releasing chlorine into the environment and applaud the California State Legislators for going after the organizations responsible for discharging water with higher than acceptable levels of chlorine from their facilities.
SONORA – The State Water Resources Control Board says in a proposed order that the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board disregarded excessive chlorine being discharged into Woods Creek from a Sonora sewage treatment plant and also inappropriately increased the amount of chlorine that Sonora and Jamestown government agencies were allowed to discharge into the creek.
The proposed order the state board issued this week would require the regional board to revise its pollution permit for the treatment plant that serves the two cities to bring chlorine discharges within legal limits.
Woods Creek flows into Don Pedro Reservoir, a popular fishing area and a tributary to the Tuolumne River. The order points out that even extremely low concentrations of chlorine are damaging to fish populations. ( source )
Government regulations restrict the amount of chlorine (both free AND total) that a company or water treatment facility may pump back onto the environment because even in low concentrations, chlorine has the ability to inflict serious harm on an ecosystem.
- Liquid Test Kits: Companies such as Taylor, Lamotte and others manufactures test kits which make of use liquid reagents.
- Test Strips: Many companies manufacture test strips which measure chlorine levels as low as 0.05 ppm (see SenSafe Free Chlorine & Total Chlorine) and as high as 5,000 ppm (see Water Check Ultra High II Free Chlorine).
- Chlorine Meters: For people with color blindness or simply the desire NOT to have to interpret color changes on the pads of test strips or in liquid samples, chlorine testing meters take all the guesswork out of testing free & total chlorine levels in water samples. Almost all chlorine testing meters use DPD Reagents in the form of liquids, tablets, powders or reagentstrips.
