Study aims to improve reliability, stability of region's drinking water supply

A scientist at the University of Texas at Arlington is leading a federally funded study which aims to improve the ability of water suppliers to ensure drinking water reliability and security under extreme meteorological and climatological events.

Ricardo Sánchez-Murillo, associate professor of Earth and environmental sciences, received a $399,799, two-year grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior for the study. He will develop a tracer tool to allow water suppliers to better manage drinking water in Dallas-Fort Worth and the surrounding region.

Tracers are substances which can be detected in water or are part of the water molecule at very low concentrations and allow following, or tracing, the flow of water. The ability to trace the flow of water is crucial for understanding the complex processes in hydrological systems.

Meteorological events such as persistent droughts and extreme storms, combined with an increasing demand for water caused by steady growth in population, are creating the need for reevaluation of Texas’ water laws and water allocation plans. Between 2012-22, Texas’ population grew by nearly 4 million people, by far the most of any state in the United States.

“The main goal of this project is to implement a tracer tool within the Tarrant Regional Water District (TRWD) of north-central Texas to better enable those in charge of the water supply to ensure the security and reliability of the region’s drinking water during droughts, flooding, and other extreme weather events,” Sánchez-Murillo said.

TRWD is responsible for providing a reliable and sustainable water supply, flood protection, and programs to promote environmental sustainability in Tarrant County and the surrounding region.

“There is a great need to understand more about water flow and distribution in the region in light of extreme weather phenomena and a growing population,” said Arne Winguth, professor and chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. “By providing better information about how these factors affect the water supply, Dr. Sánchez-Murillo’s research will help administrators to better manage water resources.” 

Sánchez-Murillo noted that there is a pressing need to quantify three things: 1) blending ratios from drinking water reservoirs, 2) the arrival time of such water blends to drinking water treatment plants, and 3) the incursion and persistence time of recycled stormwater in the tap water distribution system after large convective rainfall events.

Blending ratios involve the mixing of different water sources for drinking water supply. Quantifying blending ratios and their evolution throughout the water distribution system is necessary to assess drinking water operations and treatments, Sánchez-Murillo said. 

“However, this calculation has been challenging,” he said. “In this project, we aim to introduce a novel methodology based on water stable isotopes to resolve this fundamental issue.”

Creation of a monitoring method will enable water managers to improve strategies for treatment of drinking water and to better understand the effects of large rainfall events on the urban water cycle and the potential transport of contaminants into the water distribution system.

“Elucidation of emerging patterns in time and space will advance the understanding of water movement and mixing and the tap water supply systems’ reliability and vulnerability in light of inter-annual climate variability,” he said.

Sánchez-Murillo said that the tracer tool to be developed in this study can be used in other urban settings across the United States that also rely on surface water reservoirs for their drinking water supply.

Sánchez-Murillo has extensive experience in tracer hydrology. In 2023 he was lead author of a publication which used tracer-aided studies to analyze dry season source water uptake patterns of five unique ecosystems of Costa Rica (evergreen and seasonal rainforests, cloud forest, Páramo and dry forest). Before coming to UTA he served as coordinator of the Stable Isotopes Research Group and Water Resources Management Laboratory at the National University of Costa Rica. In 2018 he received the World Academy of Sciences award for the advancement of tracer hydrology in the Central America region.

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