Construction of WPCP

This awesome video takes you on a short 3-minute construction tour of our Water Pollution Control Plant. From water pollution to usable H2O, it's a meticulous behind-the-scenes process that takes heavy duty machinery, precise measurements, and proper decomposition. Check it out, and learn more about what you see. Keep this knowledge in your back pocket - it may come in handy during trivia night...

3 Million Gallon Flow Equalization Basin: used to store excess flows during heavy rain events to be treated later.
Screw Pumps: used to lift wastewater so flow, throughout the remainder of treatment process, occurs by gravity.
New Filter Building: constructed inside the footprint of an old Clarifier.
Press Building and Biosolids Storage Facility: used to process and store residual solids produced during the treatment process. These biosolids are then trucked to agricultural sites to be land-applied as a soil conditioner.
Updated 5 Million Gallon Bioreactor: where oxygen is transferred into treatment process to enable sludge to decompose organic material. The old process used mechanical aeration [splashing mixers], which has been converted to diffused aeration [similar to a fish tank aerator].
Premix Basin: where the recycled [hungry] sludge, with all the “Bugs” that do the work of decomposition of organic matter in the wastewater first meets the incoming “food”; and the two are homogeneously mixed to begin the biological treatment process.
Brand New Clarifier #3: the end of biological treatment where the heavier solids [sludge/bacteria] are allowed to settle [gravity separation] after they’ve done their work. From here, the sludge is recycled back to the premix basin and the clear water on top goes to filtration, disinfection, then discharged as clean water to the Etowah River.