The purpose of the The Removal Efficiency & Assessment of Treatments (“TREAT”) study is to investigate the efficiency of the treatments at the Buckman Regional Water Treatment Plant (“BRWTP,” or “the Plant”) with respect to contaminants that may occur in the Rio Grande upriver from the Buckman Direct Diversion (“BDD”).

The TREAT Study objectives are presented in the 2017 Memorandum of Understanding between the BDD Board and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), www.LANL.gov.

From Section E.4 of that MOU:

“BDD Board will fund a continuation of the Contaminant Fate Analysis that was started under the 2010 MOU under “The Removal Efficiency and Assessment of Treatments” (TREAT) Study. The TREAT Study will continue to examine the treatment efficiency of the conventional and advanced treatments at the BDD with respect to contaminants in order to help determine the BDD operational criteria for diversion from the Rio Grande. The TREAT Study will focus on the capabilities of the BDD with respect to removal of contaminants as they are found to occur in the Rio Grande at the BDD intake.”

The main conclusions from the 2017 and 2018 sampling and analysis conducted to date are:

  1. The TREAT study was not conducted for compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) – it was conducted to evaluate efficiency of the treatment process.
  2. Although not an objective of TREAT, the results show finished water is in compliance with SDWA standards.
  3. TREAT analyzed for constituents that may originate from background conditions such as constituents from LANL, or other sources such as sewage treatment plants or farming runoff. All regulated constituents are below SDWA standards. Additional information on these sampling results can be found in the sources listed below.
  4. The TREAT raw data table [GGI TREAT Raw Final PDF] should be viewed in conjunction with [GGI TREAT Raw Data Explanation Final]
  5. Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QA/QC) was conducted by the BDD contract analytical laboratories, BDD staff, and technical team. [GGI TREAT Data QC Procedures PDF]
  6. A Powerpoint presentation, presented to the BDD Board on June 7, 2018 ‘TREAT Study and GAC Disposition’ [GGI BDD PPT Presentation].
  7. The technical team identified some limitations in the TREAT sampling and analyses that have been conducted. Future TREAT Sampling protocols will continue to be reviewed and amended to provide the best sampling protocols available going forward. [GGI TREAT Raw Data Explanation Final]

TREAT Study Technical Team members included:

James Bearzi, Glorieta Geoscience, Inc., Contractor Team Lead

Daniela Bowman, BDD Regulatory Compliance Officer

Rick Carpenter, City of Santa Fe Water Conservation Manager, Acting City Water Division Director

Danny Carter, BDD Lab Analyst

Michael Dozier, BDD Operations Superintendent

Kerry Howe, UNM

Alex Puglisi, City of Santa Fe PUD Environmental Compliance Officer

Bill Schneider, City of Santa Fe PUD Water Resources & Conservation Coordinator

Jerry Schoeppner, Santa Fe County

Charles Vokes, BDD Facilities Manager