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High-Quality Tap Water Services

Advanced water quality management

High-quality tap water production by introducing global water quality standards

K-water has implemented a global water quality standard system since 2012 to ensure the global competitiveness of tap water. The global water quality standards are K-water's own standards based on the strictest drinking water quality standards of WHO and five representative OECD countries including Korea. Analyses of tap water produced in major water treatment plants abroad (US and UK) revealed that nine substances including aluminum exceeded K-water's global water quality standards and the average compliance rate was 85%, which is lower than that of the tap water produced by K-water.

K-water is working to improve the standard compliance rate by evaluating the operation performances of the water treatment plants that it is managing (large-area, local and entrusted) and receiving feedback from the assessment every year. Optimizing its water treatment process and improving poor water treatment facilities, K-water achieved a standard compliance rate of 99.99 % in 2017, which means it is producing the best quality water in the world.

Global water quality standard compliance rate
World's top-level water quality testing system

To systematically verify the accomplishment of the global water quality standards, K-water has constructed the world's top-level water quality testing system and added more items other than legally required ones, including those about various harmful substances, to thoroughly examine water safety. Every year, K-water performs tests using 300 items including drinking water quality standards on raw water of water sources and tap water, and it plans to establish a system for analyzing up to 500 candidate substances to be managed in consideration of recent water quality issues and risks through the implementation of the K-WISH 500 system by 2020. With these efforts, it will continue to strive to improve tap water safety.

K-WISH 500: Creation of a management pool with 500 test items
K-WISH 500 table
Year ~2015 2016 2017 2018~2020
No. of items 250 51 51 50 items or more per year
Cumulative total 250 301 352 500
Preemptive management of unexpected water quality risks

K-water strives to preemptively manage unexpected contamination in the process of tap water supply (e.g. the case of pesticide found in a water supply reservoir in 2012). Implementing a regular WSP (Water Safety Plan)*, it has performed risk tests using 160 items on tap water of all the 37 purification plants that it manages and achieved improvements for 127 kinds of risks. In addition, in 2017, K-water constructed the CSW** system that can monitor the inflow of contaminants in the case of drastic changes in water quality during the supply process and tested it in Goyang Purification Plant. As a result of these efforts, the Water Safety Index (WSI), which was independently developed by K-water, improved from 0.884 in 2016 to 0.901 in 2017.

* WSP : A system recommended by WHO to identify and improve harmful factors in the process of producing and supplying tap water
**CWS (Contamination Warning System) : A system that monitors water contamination by analyzing basic water quality measurement values (turbidity, etc.)

  • Preemptive management of
    unexpected water quality risks

  • Harmful factor
    improvement cases (cumulative total)

  • Dept: Clean Water Supply Facilities Maintenance Dept.
  • Name: Heo Hyeon
  • phone82-42-629-3643
  • Dept: Clean Water Supply Facilities Maintenance Dept.
  • Name: Song Byeongcheol
  • phone82-42-629-3645
  • Dept: Water Quality & Safety Research Center Dept.
  • Name: Kim Jihye
  • phone82-42-629-4741