The Ozone/UV Combination Growing up, many of us remember the
colorful diagram from science class called The Water Cycle, a
circular flow of blue color evaporating from the ocean up to the
sky, raining down into lakes and rivers, past cows, plants and
houses, and back into the sea. Today, the picture isn’t quite as
simple. The current USGS diagram is more up-to-date, but where
do we fit in the petroleum refineries, desalination plants, pig
farms and paper mills? Ironically, a huge obstacle to providing
clean water to developing municipalities and industries is the
wastewater that is produced by the sanitation, processing and
agricultural infrastructure that serves those same communities.
For example, municipalities often draw at least part of their
water from surface sources—rivers, lakes, reservoirs, etc. These
sources are subject to a variety of contaminants from the air,
water and soil around them. Some of these contaminants might be
metals in unhealthy concentrations, harmful parasites or
bacteria such as