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Flushing out funding uses: treatment facility turns sludge into compost, fertilizer
WATER AND WASTEWATER NEWS
By Laura Newell, El Dorado Hills Telegraph staff writer
Reprinted with permission from El Dorado Hills Telegraph online
The public can now learn what happens to all the stuff that goes down their drains and toilets by taking a tour of the El Dorado Hills Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Joan and Rollin Klink have lived in Cameron Park for five years and decided to take tour to learn what goes down in their county.
The tour was an eye-opener for the participants, who did not often think about wastewater treatment until they get their bills and wonder how the costs are determined.
“We just thought it would be interesting because we didn’t know anything about the process,” Joan said. Rollin said they wanted more information.
Jim Murphy leads a tour group at the El Dorado Hills Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Photo courtesy of El Dorado Hills Telegraph
“The rate increases was a big reason,” Rollin said. “We want to know how our money is being spent.”
The El Dorado Hills Wastewater Treatment Plant is one of four El Dorado Irrigation District owns and operates. The plant has enough capacity to treat average dry weather flows up to four million gallons per day.
Vickie Caulfield, division manager, led the tour with Larry Burnham Olson, Jr., operations and maintenance supervisor.
“This is a very successful plant, people come from all around, even as far as Australia, who want to start a water recycle program,” Caulfield said. “Tours help bring awareness to the costs of what it takes to run a plant and it’s all paid for by the taxpayer.”
She said costly upgrades were recently made to the plant to comply with regulations and meet expansion needs. It cost EID more than $62 million to complete the 2008-2010 project at the El Dorado Hills plant.
Recently, Caulfield said a new $2.1 million odor-reducing biofilter system at the El Dorado Hills plant was required under EID’s operating permit. “We are not allowed to have odors beyond 300 feet of our plant,” she said.
Another upgrade was solar panel inverters built to offset electricity costs averaging about $272,000 per year in savings.
Vickie Caulfield shows a tour group
the plant's solar array.
Dave Crespo, SMUD supervisor of generation crafts and power generation, attended a recent tour and was impressed with what he saw.
“As a third party, EID did a marvelous job with their inverters,” Crespo said. “In my opinion, these guys went with a really excellent and thoughtful system. It’s a perfect application. They designed the system to reduce cost and increase efficiency. You can’t ask for anything more.”
Caulfield said the most important thing for these tours is to get information out to the public. The plant also provides school tours for classes sixth grade and older.
“School tours benefits us because we learned that if we teach kids, it makes parents learn about us because students take information home to their parents and reinforce information,” Caulfield said.
A variety of household products including pharmaceuticals, kitty litter, fats, oils and grease can damage sewer pipes and the wastewater treatment system, Caulfield said. Damage then results in fines to EID and costly upgrades and maintenance of the collection pipes and treatment plants.
Wastewater, she said, flows from your house through pipes and pump stations that pump the water to the wastewater treatment plant. Once at the plant, the flow goes through various processes.
The first stop is the headworks station, or the screening and grit removal area. Wastewater then travels to the equalization tanks, which provide extra storage. Primary clarification follows, allowing for organic settling to occur.
Next the biological nutrient removal process removes nitrogen from the wastewater that is harmful to aquatic organisms. Secondary clarification next allows for additional organic settling.
“There is so much renewable energy in wastewater treatment plants, including the ability to make compost and other things,” Caulfield said. “About 90 percent of the system is used for renewable energy.”
“It looks like they have the perfect investment. I’m very impressed.”
~ Shane Horton
The next step is to travel to a 66-million-gallon reservoir that allows for storage.
Tertiary filtration then filters the water. It is then disinfected before discharging into Carson Creek and to the recycled water distribution system. Solids are removed from the primary/secondary clarifiers by pumping to a digester, and are then broken down to a sludge. Finally, those solids are “dewatered” and can then be used as a nutrient for fertilizers.
“It was a big eye-opener, I didn’t know what to expect and I’m a biology major, so this is a toy shop to me with all the biological stuff they do,” said Shane Horton, of Cameron Park and a Folsom Lake College student. “It looks like they have the perfect investment. I’m very impressed.”
For more information, visit www.eid.org. The remaining tour date is Oct. 8. Tour will begin at 10 a.m., last about one and a half hours and is limited to 25 participants.
Contact Jim Murphy at 530/642-4408, or by e-mail at jmurphy@eid.org, to request a preferred tour date.
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