Chlorine - Chloramine Information

I was recently reading the Water Quality Report and Tables for my area, Jefferson Parish (J.P. - Parish is the same as County in the rest of the U.S.), Louisiana, USA, and they had a reading for Chlorine but not for Chloramine. Since I had always understood that my public utility used chloramine as a disinfectant treatment, I wondered why the report listed only chlorine and not chloramine so I fired off a short email to the water department. Here is a reprint of the series of emails.

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9/24/2006

In the 2005 Water Quality Report and Water Quality Table, there is mention of chlorine but not chloramine. Which chemical does J.P. use to disinfect the water? I have several aquariums and I was told several years ago that J.P. uses chloramines but now I am unsure since reading over the above reports.

Thank you in advance for your reply.

Lenny V.

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9/25/2006

Hi Lenny

Jefferson has always used chloramines in the drinking water distribution system. The Water Quality Report lists total chlorine, which includes both free chlorine and combined chlorine (chloramines), because the EPA regulation and the maximum contaminant level are based on total chlorine. Basically the sum of both free chlorine and chloramines should not exceed 4 mg/L on an annual average. Sorry about the confusion, but we have to use the federal regulatory language, even though at times it may be somewhat confusing to the general public. If you have any additional questions, let me know.

Wayne K.Water
Quality Scientist IV
Jefferson Parish Water Dept.

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9/25/2006

Thank you for your quick reply.

Since you show the combined level of free chlorine and chloramine added together at 4mg/l, I was wondering if you could tell me the level of chloramine added and what percentage of the chloramine is ammonia. I keep a couple of fish tanks and whenever I test my tap, I normally get a reading of around 0.5ppm (mg/l) of ammonia. Is that figure consistent with the chloramine you all are adding? Other than after Katrina, would there ever be a reason for higher chloramine dosing by JP? When you do a pipe repair, do you treat the affected area with chlorine or chloramine? And at what percentage increase over the "normal" level of dosing?

I'm just trying to get an idea since my tap water conditioner uses different dosages for chlorine and chloramine... with chloramine requiring a dose about four times higher.... but it does not say on the bottle about what level of chloramines that it treats. Is there a national standard for dosing chloramine by public utilities? As you probably know, chloramine does not break down as easily as chlorine but as long as we fishkeepers are able to break the chlorine/ammonia bond with our "chemicals", our fish do OK since the nitrogen cycle in the tank will break down the ammonia and the tap water treatment will neutralize the chlorine.

Lenny V.

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9/26/2006

Monochloramine is the form of chloramine used by many water treatment systems in their distribution systems. Monochloramine is formed by mixing chlorine and ammonia in a ratio of 4 parts chlorine to 1 part ammonia by weight. At this ratio an excess of ammonia remains unreacted at a level of about 0.5 ppm, which you have measured. Water leaves the treatment plant with a chloramine residual no greater than 3 ppm and a free ammonia level of 0.5 ppm. There would never be any reason to raisethis level. It was not raised after Katrina.

Extensive waterlineflushing with the normal chloramine residual level was quite adequate to remove any contamination that may have been present. As this water travels through the distribution system, both chloramines and ammonia are gradually reduced; however since free ammonia is released when chloramine breaks down, the free ammonia level across the distribution system remains about the same at about 0.5 ppm. We use free chlorine to disinfect waterlines after a repair at a very high level which is undrinkable. Therefore all of this water is flushed out of the repaired section before it is put back into service, so you will never see freechlorine in the distribution system.

Wayne K.Water
Quality Scientist IV
Jefferson Parish Water Dept.

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I hope this helps some people understand the difference between Chloramine and Chlorine and how the public utility companies utilize both chemicals in their water treatment process and repairs.

It did give me additional information about their post-Katrina water treatment. I was originally told they had raised the Chloramine level by three times but this gentleman says they did not and that they flushed out leaking areas with high levels of chlorine but it never got into the actual water supply so I'm not sure why my two Golden Mystery Snails ended up dying after I finally did my first 25% PWC around four weeks after the hurricane. I thought it might have been because the chemicals were still too high for them but now I have to wonder. Maybe it was because they were not getting enough food for those three to four weeks that I had cut back the feeding so much to keep the water from deteriorating.

Goldlenny

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Hailey's Reply:

Thanks for sharing this...it was very interesting and informative.As for your snails, I bet it was lack of food. Snails are incredibly tolerant of anything wrong with the water. They can live through massive extremes of temperature, ammonia (as my snail in the fishless cycling tank proved), nitrite, nitrate, and even chlorine. I have heard stories of live snails showing up on plants that were just bleached! The one thing they are very sensitive to is starvation. I killed off all of the pond snails that were taking over my tank more than a year ago by starving them (I fed the fish just enough for them, and had no shrimp at the time, so no food was allowed to stay in the tank after the fish were through eating). Within weeks, I had no snails at all. I added malaysian trumpet snails later, and those are the only snails I have seen in my tank since. Of course, I think I had help because my gouramis seemed to have learned to hunt pond snails.

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To learn more about the water quality for your area, in the USA, check here:

http://www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo/index.html

Hope this helps.

GoldLenny

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