Since the original construction of the Emporia Water Treatment Plant in 1916, the existing facility has undergone four major upgrades. The existing plant components were antiquated and made it difficult to operate and produce consistent quality water. The City of Emporia elected to upgrade their existing nine million gallon per day (MGD) water treatment facility to meet future water consumption demands, which were projected to be 15.0 MGD by the year 2015 for an estimated population of more than 39,200.

The goals for Professional Engineering Consultants, P.A. (PEC) was to provide continuous uninterrupted service to the City, modify the facility to produce finished water that would surpass the Federal Standards for turbidity removal, provide disinfection, reduce contaminant levels to less than the Safe Drinking Water Act requirements, and reduce the hardness of the water to between 80 mg/L and 100 mg/L. The design for the facility included the construction of a lime sludge handling facility, filtration building, chemical feed system, ozone disinfection and operations center.

The primary raw water source for the City is the Neosho River which is delivered by the raw water pump station with variable rate pumping. The water is treated by the introduction of chemicals for softening and clarification, disinfected for public safety, filtered and then delivered for consumption.

Lime Sludge Handling Facility
Through this process, some of the water is used in the removal of lime sludge and in the backwash water to clean the filter beds. PEC has also designed the lime sludge handling facility to dewater the solids produced in the softening process. This facility consists of three cells, decant structures and processing schedule for cleaning the cells on a three-year cycle.

Filtration
The PEC team proposed the design of a new filtration building to house the filters, transfer clearwell, low service pumping, chlorine storage, chlorine feed, ammonia feed and carbon dioxide feed. The structure is one of the key operation centers in the water treatment plant and focuses on the finished water quality. An additional feature to assure a quality product is the “on-line” finished water turbidimeter and computer monitoring of the discharge from each filter. This system prevents water that exceeds 0.3 NTU turbidity from entering the distribution system. This is especially important near the end of the filtration cycle and when the filter is first placed on-line following backwash. The backwash cycle, also computer controlled, is monitored by the operator.

Ozone Disinfection
The ozonation system provides the primary disinfection. Ozone destroys or inactivates the bacteria, virus and cysts that may be present in the water with minimum disinfection by-products. Ozone dosages are regulated based upon the residuals detected following the reaction basin and computerized control.

This control allows the optimum use of the chemical for disinfection without over feeding. Following filtration, chlorine and aqua ammonia are added to the water to form chloramines. Chloramines stop the formation of disinfection by-products and provide a stable residual for protection in the distribution system.

Storage
The treated water is then transferred to the three million gallon ground storage tank through three of four 5.0 MGD variable frequency drive vertical turbines. The backwash water is pumped through one of two 5,200 gpm vertical turbine constant speed pumps.

The rate of backwash is controlled by the plant computer (pneumatic positioners) from the filter control console. Level monitoring of the filters, clearwells and storage towers allow the operator to fully monitor and control the system. Alarm conditions are identified immediately and direct the operator to the problem.

High Service Pump Station
Construction of the high service pump station served three primary functions.
• The addition of high service horizontal split case pumps had to operate within the distribution model.
• A SCADA system utilizing radio to control the pump operation was required.
• The high service pump station had to “blend in” with the surrounding park and residential area.

Operations Center
The City’s operations center is designed to meet current codes and standards, including ADA regulations and energy efficiency standards. This building houses the laboratory, superintendent’s office, conference/training room, maintenance shop and central computer system.

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