Although the kinetics and mechanism of monochloramine decay in organic-free waters are relatively well understood, those in natural waters are not, due to exceedingly complex and poorly defined interactions of monochloramine with natural organic matter (NOM) and particles. Ozonation followed by a biologically activated carbon (BAC) filtration is a commonly practiced process option that affects the characteristics of both dissolved and particulate constituents in the water. However, how these changes in water constituents affect stability of the residual disinfectant, or monochloramine in particular, are currently unknown. Kinetics of monochloramine decay in water samples obtained before and after ozonation and BAC treatments were performed under varying operating conditions were determined by bench-scale batch experiments. Stability of monochloramine in the BAC filter effluent samples obtained at different times after backwashing was determined. It was found that in most cases monochloramine stability was greatly decreased after BAC filtration. Further filtering the BAC effluents with 1.2 and #61549;m polycarbonate membrane resulted in a substantial increase in monochloramine stability. A further increase was observed after filtering the samples using a 0.4 m membrane. This finding suggested that particulate matter generated from the filters could be the major cause of monochloramine instability. The fines from the activated carbon, possible components of the particulate matter eluting from the BAC filters, were found to exert an insignificant monochloramine demand both in the presence and absence of NOM, which is contrary to previous speculation in the literature about their demand for monochloramine. While there appears to exist a relationship between chloramine demand and HPC count of the filter effluent, more research will be needed to determine the effect of nature and type of microorganisms and their byproducts have on chloramine demand. Effect of ozonation on monochloramine stability is also under investigation using both the water sampled from full-scale plant and the synthetic water prepared with Suwannee River NOM.