Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Open House Held At Newly-Expanded Wastewater Treatment Plant

   An open house was held Tuesday at the newly-expanded City of Lawrenceburg Wastewater Treatment Plant on Ezell Drive.

   Members of the Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 9:00, and the public was invited to tour the facility.

   The project was undertaken in order to meet current and future growth needs for the treatment of municipal and industrial wastewater. The State Revolving Loan Program, as administered by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, supplied project funding through a twenty-year, $13,500,000, low-interest loan. The facility was designed by Griggs and Mahoney, Inc., Consulting Engineers, of Murfreesboro. Judy Construction Company of Cynthia, Kentucky, submitted the low bid of $11,909,000.

   The completed project has increased the system’s wastewater treatment capacity from 2.5 MGD to 4.5 MGD. This expansion not only increased the wastewater treatment capacity for future growth and development, but also allows compliance with a new NPDES Permit. The project included conversion of the existing treatment process from two stage trickling filters to a three-cell deep sequential batch reactor with tertiary cloth filtration. The expansion included the construction of a new raw wastewater pumping station, headworks that includes screening and grit separation, three-cell sequential batch reactor activated sludge treatment unit, in-line three-cell tertiary rotating disc filters, ultraviolet (UV) disinfection system, a cascade aeration structure, a new outfall, and upgrades to plant inlet and effluent sewer lines. The existing anaerobic digester units have been converted to aerobic digesters. The existing sludge dewatering belt unit was large enough to handle the expansion, and was unchanged.

   In addition to upgrading the treatment and digester operations, a new control building with offices, relocated laboratory and maintenance facilities were constructed. A new emergency generator which powers the entire site and all treatment components has been included, as well as new site fencing, electric access gate, site lighting, closed circuit security cameras, and digital recorder.

   The project was planned to be constructed in two phases, allowing treatment capacity and permit limitations to be maintained with the old plant components until the new components were operational. After Phase I was placed in operation in September, 2006, the old plant was demolished and those portions scheduled for conversion were completed. Phase II was completed in March of 2007.

.