How to avoid drain system to pollute pumped water?

[The A.W.G.]

Sorry I don't understand. To make the water/drain system work, I have to connect the two systems. But this way, the drain system will connect to the water pump, polluting the water the pump itself is pumping. My citizens are dying because of this.
How to avoid this?

[MaxFX]

Both the 'Water Pumping Station' and the 'Water Drain Pipe' are positioned on the shoreline near the water.

If this is a river, make sure you position these buildings in such a way that the polluted water coming out of the 'Water Drain Pipe', is moving away from the 'Water Pumping Station'. i.e. place the pumping station upstream from the water drain pipe.

You can view the 'Water Info View' to see how the currents in bodies of water move.

Obviously if you put these buildings on a lake, it is very likely that you're going to end up pumping up polluted water. Because unlike a river, a lake doesn't have strong currents.

If you use lakes, make sure you plase the pumping station in one lake, and the drain at another lake.

[The A.W.G.]

Originally posted by MaxFX:

If this is a river, make sure you position these buildings in such a way that the polluted water coming out of the Water Drain Pipe, is moving away from the 'Water Pumping Station'.

You mean all of my citizens are dying just because I've built the two stations in the wrong order?

[MaxFX]

Originally posted by AWGone:

Originally posted by MaxFX:

If this is a river, make sure you position these buildings in such a way that the polluted water coming out of the Water Drain Pipe, is moving away from the 'Water Pumping Station'.

You mean all of my citizens are dying just because I've built the two stations in the wrong order?

Could be. Here's a picture of how these buildings should be placed, as well as the info you get from the info view: https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Water_and_sewage#/media/File:Water_Info_View_SS.png

On the left side of the picture you see the water pumping station, pumping up clean water. In the middle and right side of the picture you see some water treatment plants. These pollute the water just like the drain pipes, but as you can see by the arrows in the water, the water is moving away from the pumps.

[The A.W.G.]

Thank you. I was using a portion of the river without currents so the drain was all over the clean water

[DD]

If you build your water and sewer pumps well out of town with water upstream and sewer downstream and keep ALL of your buildings back at least i6 u from your water systems (streams, rivers, lakes, ect) you won't have any water pollution issues

[WhiteKnight77]

Also, if you have the Sunset Harbor DLC, there are inland water treatment plants that clean up the water pretty good and release it back into the ground. The Advanced Eco Inland Water Treatment Plant removed the most pollution from the sewage to return it back into the ground, but placing them in an industry zone or area, keeps pollution from entering your water system.

[joeball123]

Another option, if you have both Green Cities and Sunset Harbor, is to cover an Eco Water Treatment Plant (requires reaching the Capital City milestone if not playing with everything unlocked) with a district running the Algae-Based Water Filtration policy (requires you to have an Algae Farm - the second-tier fish farm - somewhere in the city; the algae farm does not need to be in a district running the Algae-Based Water Filtration policy, but if I recall correctly you cannot just plop it to unlock the policy and then get rid of it); the resultant outflow appears to be completely contaminant-free and does not cause problems with drinking water even when a pumping station is placed adjacent to the eco water treatment plant. Combining an Eco Water Treatment Plant with the Algae-based Water Filtration policy also prevents your sewage outflow from destroying fisheries, though as it may change the volume of water flowing through an area it could still cause interference with specialized fishing docks.

A third option, using just Green Cities, is to separate the water intake from the sewage outflow with floating garbage collectors (unlocked at the Big City milestone if playing with milestones), though even with Water Treatment / Eco Water Treatment Plants you probably need to run the outflow through several lines of floating garbage collectors before it's clean enough to drink. Additionally, between collision issues and the collector's small area of effect, it can be difficult to capture the entire pollution plume using floating garbage collectors, especially where the plume interacts with a coastline.