Water Efficiency July/August 2012 : Page 34
Th at being said, Means thinks utili-ties must adopt individualized decisions about stakeholder engagement. “If you can convey that value proposition short of a big stakeholder process, go for it. Maybe you’ve got really good commu-nication with the community and you don’t have to do anything but the typical kind of public outreach. But if it looks like the issue is going to be controversial from a rate standpoint or a public health standpoint . . . at least you will have the opportunity to The Water articulate what the chal-Treatment Plant in lenges are, and when you Racine, WI, go to your decision-making uses GE’s body, you’ll be able to know immersed membranes. where the opposition will be coming from and you can articulate why the direction you’re taking is the right direction, whether the public is supportive or not.” Just such an outreach project was undertaken by the Army Corps of Engineers for the Washington Aque-duct, the water wholesaler that serves, among others, the nation’s capital. Th e goal was to develop consensus around issues such as emerging contaminants, disinfection byproduct risk, and in general plans about improvements to the resiliency of the system and perfor-mance optimization. To facilitate the discussion managers brought together the public with a panel of experts who could lay out the issues, the risk management opportunities, available technologies to manage those risks, and ultimately what it would cost to go down diff erent compliance pathways. Th e two public workshops, which Means facilitated, resulted in a draft plan for the utility to guide long-term planning. He points out that this kind of stakeholder involvement was critical for a utility that serves agencies of the national government and in a region that has developed an active group of non-government organizations, which take a keen interest in how it operates. A FUTURISTIC ORIENTATION In Arizona the City of Glendale may have had a little more public feedback than it may have liked—600 to 800 complaints a year about taste and odors related to the algae in its water supply. As part of its long-range system retrofi t, the Cholla plant converted four conventional anthracite sand fi lters to deep bed reagglomerated granular activation carbon (GAC) and added two additional GAC fi lters, along with new www.waterefficiency.net/water-quality-monitoring for related articles: The water in the 30-to 150-mile-long uncovered canals that deliver surface water to Glendale’s treatment plants can rise to 102 ° F in summer. Evaporation during transporta-tion also elevates high GE ZeeWeed mineral concentrations membranes being placed in this source water, into membrane resulting in high total tanks at the Racine Water dissolved solids and Treatment Plant hardness. As if this wasn’t enough, there was the need to comply with EPA’s Stage 2 Disinfectant and Disinfectant Byproducts Rule. To address these challenges, the city opted for a comprehensive facili-ties planning and design project that ultimately led to both improvements in two older facilities and development of a new treatment plant. Th e city’s three water facilities serve water to 300,000 people in the city itself, 55,000 residents of Peoria, and approximately 1,500 in Phoenix. Its Cholla facility (rated at 30 MGD) and new Oasis Water Campus (12.5 MGD) treat water from the Salt River Project Arizona Canal, with the Oasis facility also equipped to take in and mix groundwater into the potable water supply. solids removal equipment, sedimenta-tion basins, and chemical feed to control pH during water treatment. Th e new Oasis plant was designed from the start for deep bed mono-media GAC fi lters. As part of the planning process, the city did almost two years of pilot-ing in which it evaluated a range of options including chloramines and ozone. Water Plant Superintendent Rick Scott says the decision not to go with chloramines was based on concern about controlling renitrifi cation; also 34 WATER EFFICIENCY WWW.WATEREFFICIENCY.NET PHOTOS: GE
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