Day 4 - Thursday, February 21

Today we visited a rural village near Hyderabad where a reverse osmosis plant has been installed to treat the groundwater for fluoride contamination. Groundwater is the sole drinking water source in this area, as much of the surface water is highly contaminated due to industrial activity in Hyderabad. The groundwater is impacted with high levels of fluoride, as much as 10 ppm, and TDS. So we met with the vendor that sells these small capacity RO plants to the villages for a reasonable fee, which was very interesting because RO is a great treatment option that is generally cost prohibitive (not to mention the specialized training and equipment required to maintain such a facility). One outstanding issue that we saw with this treatment technique is there is no plan of what to do with the brine solution that is produced during the treatment process. It is currently just discharged to the field outside of the plant. Another issue (and this seems global to AP) is how to accurately gauge the performance of this treatment technique when there appears to be a lack of reliable water quality labs in the state. We are off to Ongole tonight on the train, and will visit our village for the first time tomorrow morning.