By JAMES EIK
Staff Reporter
A delayed spring and heavy snow runoff has extended the high flows at the Medical Lake's wastewater treatment plant.
Parallel to the wet ground and swollen rivers, the plant has seen higher than normal flows for an extended period.
“It's not been excessively higher, but it has been higher,” plant supervisor Steve Cooper said.
The wastewater plant takes anything flushed down the city's drains, separates the clear water, removes the nutrients or anything environmentally harmful and distributes the water back into the environment. West Medical Lake and tributaries to Deep Creek receive water from the treatment plant. Class A reclaimed water, the highest grade possible, comes from the plant.
The water is actually drinkable.
Currently, nearly 500,000 gallons of wastewater flow through the plant each day, but that amount varies with runoff levels. Cooper said that the late spring has prolonged their high flow levels this year.
“If you take a ping pong ball and throw it at the start, it would take 48 hours to see it at the end,” Cooper said.
Balancing the mechanical and biological systems on site are all part of the plant's operation. Aside from the massive pumps, little microbes called nitrifiers, Cooper said, help convert ammonia into nitrogen gas, which is released into the air.
“It looks easy and it looks simple, and it is as far as the basic ideas and principles behind it,” Cooper said. Managing day -to-day operations, however, and making sure the biological systems are working correctly give the plant's operators a challenge.
The plant sends approximately 100,000 gallons per day to tributaries that feed into Deep Creek. Since the plant's construction disrupted the flow of water in its tributaries, the Department of Ecology has asked that they not cut off the creek's water supply.
“It's not a big deal,” Cooper said. “It's just something that we have to do.”
A new operator at the plant, Darrell Pasher, fits in well with his background in mechanics and pumps. Approved at the June Medical Lake City Council meeting, he started the job July 1. A Spokane resident, he has lived in the area since 1965.
Pasher has previous experience with golf carts, which actually use the same technology as the wastewater treatment plant.
“Everything is so familiar; it's just in a bigger aspect. It's the same thing,” he said. “That's what caught my interest.”
“It's still the same technology, whether it's being used here to run a pump or a golf cart, it's the same thing,” Cooper said.
Staffed every day of the year for eight hours each day, the plant's four operators keep busy.
“Obviously you want to stay on top of the system here, and we have requirements from the departments of Health and Ecology; they want certain types of tests done each day to help monitor the conditions of water quality,” Cooper said. “We get a lot done for four people.”
Another wastewater treatment plant is currently in construction in Airway Heights. That facility will also send out reclaimed water with a grade of Class A.
In a time of tightening budgets and rising costs, keeping the plant running without problems is an important part of the job.
“It's about making everything more self-sufficient and almost self-running,” Pasher said.
James Eik can be reached at [email protected].
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