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Wastewater Plant Makes Dirty Water Clean Again

Posted on: Monday, 19 December 2005, 09:00 CST

By Daniel Mcnamara, The Daily News, Jacksonville, N.C., The Daily News, Jacksonville, N.C.

Dec. 19--In 1998, Jacksonville transferred its wastewater treatment operations from Wilson Bay to a 6,300-acre spray field site as a result of increasingly stringent environmental policies.

The old system, state regulators said through numerous violation write-ups, was dumping chemicals and organisms into the New River.

The city's current sewer treatment facility -- a $50 million plant due for a $20 million expansion by 2009 -- is a symbiotic organism of its own.

Every day, the effluent waste of Jacksonville's 68,000 residents is funneled into the wastewater treatment site, located near Albert J. Ellis Airport, where it undergoes a thorough scrubbing.

The wastewater first enters a filtration process that removes solids and grease, said Ray Holder, Jacksonville's plants manager.

From there, the water is pumped into a series of two lagoons that remove micro-organisms by confronting them with the treatment facility's own batch of bacteria. Aerators stir the waters in order to facilitate it.

After the germs have been weeded out, the water is then pumped into a third storage lagoon before it is finally sprayed onto some of the site's 6,300 acres of pine forest. On average, a given gallon of water will spend about three days meandering through the lagoons before it is shot from a spray nozzle.

The plant currently employs two lagoon "trains," both of which treat about 3 million gallons per day. As part of the expansion, the city is building a third "train," a larger storage lagoon and purchasing additional adjacent acreage on which to spray.

Soil composition and proximity to the perimeter limits the acreage that the water -- which by this point has the smell and coloration of well water -- can be sprayed on, Holder said.

Misconceptions about the water's quality led nearby residents to speak out against the treatment facility during preliminary hearings.

"The material we spray out is not like what comes out of a septic tank," Holder said.

The trees seem to agree. Holder estimated that the pines, fueled by 100 inches of real and artificial rain a year (twice the average rainfall of Onslow County), grow at twice the rate of their less-hydrated peers.

Harvesting the trees and selling them offsets some of Jacksonville's sewer costs. But Holder said the more-restrictive and therefore more expensive cost of logging the trees minimizes compensation.

Jacksonville sewer customers also see pennies deducted from their bill thanks to a hunting club that leases out some of the land.

The hunters, who are required to repair any damages they make to the thousands of spray nozzles and miles of water pipes, have also helped by reporting malfunctioning equipment.

"It has been a really good experience for the city," Holder said.

Contact Daniel McNamara at dmcnamara@freedomenc.com or 353-1171 Ext. 237.

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Source: The Daily News

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