T
he City of Glendive operated 75 acres of an aging facultative lagoon treatment system that discharged into a small creek, that at certain times of year had no running water (Glendive Creek). With the old lagoons, the City experienced BOD5 and TSS permit violations. They also expected the next discharge permit cycle to include strict, and possibly not achievable, Ammonia, E. Coli, and metals limits. Through many meetings with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), Great West Engineering and the City were able to change the discharge location from Glendive Creek to the Yellowstone River. This change, along with the constructed treatment improvements, allowed for achievable permit limits while further protecting the environment.
The City’s new Water Resource and Recovery Facility (WRRF), completed in December 2015, is the first Intermittent Cycle Extended Aeration (ICEAS) process in Montana. The ICEAS treatment process provides multiple advantages versus other systems by bringing together process, aeration, decanting, and control in a single treatment tank. It is fully automated to reduce the complexity of operation. Continuous inflow distributes variations in flows and loads evenly across both treatment basins, simplifying day-to-day operations, as well as accommodating single basin operation for low flow and maintenance conditions. The energy compared to a traditional sequencing batch reactors (SBR) can be reduced by up to 50%.
This project has provided the City with a completely new facility to provide high-quality treatment to one of our invaluable resources—water. This high-quality treated water supplements flow to the Yellowstone River, where it supports aquatic life and helps other communities downstream to enjoy an abundance of water for recreational uses and production of drinking water.
Great West Engineering and our partners have recently received an Engineering Excellence Award for wastewater treatment in Montana for our role in the City of Glendive’s new WRRF. The award is given by the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC). It recognizes engineering firms for projects that demonstrate an exceptional degree of innovation, complexity, achievement and valve.
Project highlights include:
- Flow through SBR technology (ICEAS)
- Average daily flow – 1.3 Million Gallons per Day (MGD)
- SBR Basins 1 MG each (2)
- Aeration – 5 blowers, 3,024 diffusers
- Post Equalization Basin – 615,400 gallons
- Aerated Sludge Holding Tank – 11 days of retention
- Poor soils – 338 friction piers supporting structures
- Headworks Building – Vulcan step screen and Pista Grit Vortex system
- Chemical Feed – ferric chloride and sodium hypochlorite
- Control Building – pumping, controls, class II laboratory, and office
- Pump Gallery – 1,550 gpm effluent pumps, 120 gpm WAS pumps, 140 gpm sludge pumps
- Pressure vessel UV Disinfection
- Solids Handling Building – belt filter press producing 700 dry lbs/hour
- Discharge location changed to Yellowstone River from Glendive Creek
- 16-month construction period, year round construction
- Designed to easily expand to 2.25 MGD
For more information on the City’s new Wastewater treatment plant or to talk with a wastewater treatment expert please contact:
Craig Pozega, PE
(406) 495-6180
