Water Treatment Plant Tour

Do you know where your water comes from?!?!?!  Really....have you seen how it goes from the river to your house?  Well we got a chance to tour a higher tech water treatment plant in the area.



This is a control panel watching the water usage.

This plant handles abou 3 million gallons of water per day!!!  The local university can go through 1 million gallons by itself!!!

 Where were were standing these pumps were pulling water into the plant and under us there were very large holding tanks where the initial water treatment process was taking place.

 This holding areas is where the sludge is being allowed to settle and separate from the water.  The "sludge" as it is called is basically lime that is put into large ponds for area farmers to transport to local fields.

Large holder for water softeners.

 More separating of "sludge"

Flouride that is added to our water to help our teeth.

 The lime treatment machines.

What the lime looks like.

This plant has ultraviolet light that they use to treat the water.  It kills harmful bacteria in the water.



This is a look at the many layers of charcoal that the water travels through to help purify it.



This is pretty awesome.  This is a new reverse osmosis system that this plant has been working on installing.  It is being rolled out in the next couple weeks.  This $12 million system is basically a massiver PUR water filtration system that is being added on top of the other treatments that this plant puts the drinking water through.

 They check the water several times a day.  They check the PH and the chlorine levels.  They not only check at the plant itself, but also at 12-14 places throughout the area that they provide water to.

 They do water testing for the Health Department also.  This water sample contains Ecoli.  NASTY STUFF!!!  (The water was not from them!)

These are more lab machines.  They help check the bacteria in samples.  The one on the left is a mini oven that destroys the items that test with nasty bacteria.  Kills it all and the containers too.

They have state of the art survellance.  Cameras and electric fences that are triggered to the police department.  Extra protection for the water supply.



It was a very interesting field trip.  I really enjoyed learning and was amazed that this much is done to provide safe drinking water (I wish our town had this nice of a system.).