A new framework for small drinking water plant sustainability support and decision-making.

Public drinking water system decisions about treatment processes are becoming more challenging, especially as regulations become more stringent and source water quality degrades. For small systems that serve <10,000 people, treatment decisions are particularly difficult due to limited resources and because they do not currently have resources to help them make informed and sustainable decisions using environmental, social, and economic criteria. Therefore, a user-friendly sustainability assessment framework, which compares treatment processes relevant to a wide variety of small drinking water systems, was constructed.