Ephrata receives wastewater grant

EPHRATA —  Ephrata was awarded a $135,000 grant by the state for an improvement at the city’s wastewater treatment facility.

The Department of Commerce awarded $6.4 million to 43 applicants to improve energy efficiency or aid conservation as part of the federal Recovery Act. Ephrata’s money is slated to add a variable speed drive on the rotor in the oxidation ditch.

The facility was part of a pilot project in 1999. City Administrator Wes Crago said the facility was state of the art at the time.

“I believe I would still call it state of the art. It is the new treatment process that the state is going towards because you don’t pollute downstream. What comes out of it is clean and … with one more step would be able to classify as drinking water,” he said.

Since the process was new when the plant was built, the plant experienced problems with separating the solids from the liquids, Crago said. When this happens water filters receive too many solids and the solids have too much water in them causing the plant to stop and send the sewage into a separate container while city employees clean the system.

The drive is expected to help solids settle as they pass through the plant. It was one part of the solution offered by Nancy Morter, a Gray and Osborne project engineer, in a September report to the city council.

Morter said along with keeping the plant running, fixing this problem also allows the city to sell its reclaimed water to companies.

“You have had some interest … but until you really have a reliable treatment plant, the development of a reclaimed water utility really is going to be difficult,” she said.

The engineers found the system promotes the growth of filamentous bacteria, which doesn’t settle in the water, Morter said. While similar treatment plants in other areas don’t have the same problem, it could be caused by the wastewater the plant receives.

“What we want is floc-forming bacteria, which are bacteria that compress and settle well,” she said.  “For some reason, Ephrata doesn’t form floc-forming bacteria.”

The rotor turns the water adding oxygen. The engineers also think the current rotor is breaking up the small amount of floc-forming bacteria.

“You’d have the ability to turn the speed up and down on those rotors,” she said. “The side benefits to that are you are saving energy. You are not putting more air into the ditch than what you need.”

The part is estimated to cost about $240,000. The city plans to use reserves from its sewer fund to pay for the rest of the change, Crago said.

“There are sufficient reserves for the match in the sewer fund. We haven’t gotten any paperwork at all yet, all we’ve got is a notification and we showed up on a Web site list of who got what,” he said. “To land any grant in this period is pretty remarkable.”