Coagulation/flocculation/sedimentation is a common pretreatment process prior to microfiltration (MF) or ultrafiltration (UF) to alleviate membrane fouling, however there has been limited research on floatation as the pretreatment separation process. The main objective of this study is to compare sedimentation with floatation as part of the pretreatment for ultrafiltration of Ottawa River water (ORW) with relatively high natural organic matter (NOM) content. Water samples pretreated at two full-scale plants were subjected to multiple-day UF membrane fouling tests (constant flux with backwash and chemical cleaning) using an automated bench-scale UF hollow fiber membrane system. For all the experiments, the transmembrane pressure (TMP) increased sharply during the beginning of the operation (~10 h), which indicated the adsorption was significant. In the later cycles, the TMP showed a more linear constant increase, which indicated the built up of the cake layers. The total fouling index (TFI), hydraulically irreversible fouling index (HIFI) and chemical irreversible fouling index (CIFI) for floated water were much smaller than those of settled waters during both summer and winter testing. Thus, for this type of water coagulation/floatation pretreatment was superior process compared to coagulation/sedimentation, the decreased fouling appears to be linked to greater hydrophobic NOM removal by the coagulation/floatation. For all the tests, HIFI/TFIs were less than 0.1, which is to mean most of the fouling was reversible by hydraulic backwashing.Large fluctuation of backwash efficiencies with time were found for all the tested waters. Enhanced chemical backwash with 100 ppm chlorine and chemical clean with 0.1N NaOH & 200 ppm chlorine were found to be very effective at reducing fouling for pretreated ORW. As expected longer filtration cycles resulted in greater fouling but with a slightly greater degree of hydraulically reversible fouling.