9/21/24 Boil Advisory has been issue for Germantown Water all but the Dorcheat Road area are included in the boil advisory. Boil Advisory will be in effect until our samples have cleared testing with the Health Department. .
- Water supply systems get water from a variety of locations after appropriate treatment, including groundwater (aquifers), surface water (lakes and rivers), and the sea through desalination. The water treatment steps include, in most cases, purification, disinfection through chlorination and sometimes fluoridation.
- Treated water then either flows by gravity or is pumped to reservoirs, which can be elevated such as water towers or on the ground (for indicators related to the efficiency of drinking water distribution see non-revenue water). Once water is used, wastewater is typically discharged in a sewer system and treated in a sewage treatment plant before being discharged into a river, lake or the sea or reused for landscaping, irrigation or industrial use (see also sanitation).
Drinking water quality has a micro-biological and a physico-chemical dimension. There are thousands of parameters of water quality. In public water supply systems water should, at a minimum, be disinfected most commonly through the use of chlorination or the use of ultra violet light or it may need to undergo treatment, especially in the case of surface water. For more details, please see the separate entries on water quality, water treatment and drinking water.