VOORHEES, NJ, March 14, 2013 -- American Water (NYSE: AWK), the nation’s largest publicly traded water and wastewater utility company, today announced it has been awarded a research grant from the Water Research Foundation to partner with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and University of Alberta to determine the occurrence of nitrosamines in drinking water systems in North America.

The total value of the project is $711,902, with $400,000 funded by the Water Research Foundation and $311,902 in-kind contribution from the project team. American Water will directly receive $137,200 to pay for research costs.

The project will examine drinking water plants in the U.S. States and Canada to clarify the impact of various conventional and advanced treatment processes in minimizing the formation of nitrosamines, which are known carcinogenic compounds. Certain nitrosamines are by-products of the disinfectant chloramines -- a common disinfectant in the U.S. drinking water industry, which is used as an alternative to chlorine to control the formation of regulated halogenated by-products. This research will allow the team to determine key factors that lead to nitrosamine formation in treated drinking waters using chloramines and identify cost-effective controls.

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering inclusion of nitrosamines in future drinking water regulations. Should this happen, the information from this project will be very beneficial for drinking water utilities as they fine tune their treatment processes to meet such regulations,” stated Dr. Zia Bukhari, American Water senior environmental scientist.

The project team consists of Metropolitan Water District’s Stuart Krasner as the principal investigator, with Dr. Zia Bukhari and Dr. XingFang Li of University of Alberta serving as co-principal investigators.