ABSTRACT
Many lakes and streams are showing signs of excessive fertilization due to the input of aquatic plant nutrients from anthropogenic sources. Drinking water treatment difficulties presented by algal development in reservoirs can be prevented, first of all, by lowering nutrient input into drinking water reservoirs. One possible intervention is to use naturally growing periphyton communities on artificial substrata to lower nutrient loads in reservoir tributaries. This chapter evaluates the efficiency of periphyton communities in nutrient elimination in a continuous-flow trough in the field. Periphyton growth could be used either in waterworks pretreatment, especially in small eutrophic tributaries to drinking water reservoirs, or in the tertiary treatment process. Before use, however, it would be necessary to check the response under different environmental conditions such as current velocity, influent concentrations of nutrients, size and composition of artificial substrata, or position of the substrata in the trough.
