Abstract:
Understanding whether the spatiotemporal dynamics of the drinking water microbiome are reproducible in full-scale drinking water systems is an important step in devising engineering strategies for effectively managing and manipulating it. However, direct comparisons across full-scale drinking water systems are challenging because multiple factors, from source water to treatment process choice and configuration, can be unique to each system. This study compared the spatiotemporal dynamics of the drinking water microbiome in two drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs) with identical sequences of treatment strategies. These DWTPs treat source waters from the same river system and treated drinking water is distributed within the same large-scale distribution system (DWDS) with similar disinfectant residual regiments. Dissimilarities in source water communities were tempered by the predisinfection treatments, resulting in highly similar postfiltration microbial communities between the two systems. However, high community turnover due to disinfection resulted in highly dissimilar microbial communities in the finished water between the two systems. Interestingly, however, the degree of similarity of the microbial communities in the two systems increased during transit through the DWDS despite the presence of a disinfectant residual. Overall, our study finds that the drinking water microbiome demonstrated reproducible spatial and temporal dynamics within both, independent but nearly identical, DWTPs and their corresponding DWDSs.
Description:
SUPPORTING INFORMATION : Additional data regarding water quality parameters, sample collection, and the relative abundance of dominant bacterial groups (Tables S1–S5 and S7); additional α and β diversity measures and statistical data (Tables S6 and S8–S10); the taxonomic association of ASVs (Figure S1); ASVs shared among source waters (Figure S2); spatial and temporal changes in α and β diversity measures (Figures S3–S5); changes in water quality parameters (Figures S6 and S7); and Varpart analysis (Figure S8) (PDF)
