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Today - Water Tastes Even Better With A New Plant With increased regulations, new technology, and still more people moving to Fargo, a 1989 study finally recommended increasing our water treatment capacity to 30 million gallons per day.
Bob Welton, city engineer for utilities for the City of Fargo, has been involved in the new water plant project since its early planning stages in 1989. "In our new water treatment plant, we've put into action all the new knowledge we've gained about what makes water safe and how to achieve the best water quality." Fargo's new water treatment plant was designed by Black & Veatch of Kansas City and Ulteig Engineers of Fargo. Black and Veatch have been involved with the city's water treatment plant since the late 1940s
Just as important, the new plant has an integrated design. Combined with the increased basin size, the various stages of treatment give us more of what we call "contact time" - the amount of time the water spends with the treatment chemicals. One thing we've learned over the years is that the greater the contact time at the water treatment plant, the higher the water quality that comes out of your faucet. Our raw water intake and presedimentation facility - which adds a new, separate stage to the treatment process - have improved the handling of the turbid, silty water for which the Red is known. Starting at this presedimentation stage, chemicals are injected to handle changes in raw water quality.
Two-stage softening allows more reaction time - contact time - so targeted hardness levels can be achieved year-round. Ozone disinfection, also effective in controlling taste and odor, replaces chlorine as the primary disinfectant for our water. Ozone disinfection is a proven technology used successfully in Europe for many years without producing potentially hazardous byproducts - and we're one of the first dozen water treatment facilities in the United States to implement it.
Filters are cleaned with an air - and - water backwash system, much more efficient than the old plant's water - only method - The new filters, in fact, always operate at 99.99 percent or greater efficiency. With increased testing capacity, our new full service laboratory helps us meet all the changing federal standards for safe water - and offers the capacity to test water for other communities in the region. In fact, with Fargo's water treatment facilities so well - positioned to take care of future needs, the next major issue is not likely to be water quality, but water quantity - where future generations will get their water supply. Maybe that's the challenge for a future "Frank Anders."
And the water tastes better than ever! Yes, I think even Papa would be proud.
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Fargo's old plant
was to be replaced by a new water treatment plant. Our waterworks is
like the hub of a bicycle wheel, with the distribution system as the
spokes. To avoid rebuilding that system, the new plant was built immediately
adjacent to the old plant, so the "spokes" were still in place. As the
initial step in construction, the city of Fargo purchased 31 homes located
on the new plant site. Construction began in 1994. and believe me, it
took a lot to build the new water plant - enough concrete to pave eight
miles of city streets, enough structural steel to build 16 interstate
bridges, and enough electrical wire to stretch from Fargo to Minneapolis!
The new water plant,
built at a cost of over 42 million dollars, is larger, with a capacity
of thirty million gallons a day, easily expandable to handle forty-five
millions gallons per day as Fargo continues to grow.
Handling those chemicals
is vastly improved in the new plant. with bulk chemical facilities used
to reduce the old back-breaking methods of unloading and manhandling
bagged chemicals. Computer control systems allow operators to run the
entire water treatment plant - plus remote pumping stations and water
towers - from the main control room.
We still use chlorine
and ammonia to protect the water from contamination during distribution
to Fargo homes, but the dosages are less, since ozone is now the primary
disinfectant. New mixed-media filters use the same principle in the
new plant as in the old, with a 42 - inch deep filter bed - 12 inches
of gravel, 10 inches of sand and 20 inches of anthracite coal, as compared
to a 27 - inch filter bed in the old plant.
Just as the first
waterworks implemented the latest in technology for its day, Fargo's
new water treatment plant is - as engineer Frank Anders said of the
old plant so many years ago "an establishment to which every citizen
can point with pride."