Take a Tour of the Fargo Water Treatment Plant

By Hope Deutscher

The United States has one of the safest water supplies in the world. Something we may take for granted. In Fargo and Moorhead the Red River is the primary source for drinking water. Hope Deutscher takes us on a tour of the Fargo Water Treatment Plant and the Moorhead Wastewater Treatment Plant - two of the most technologically advanced water treatment plants in the world, ensuring that our drinking water remains safe and that the quality of the water we send back to the river is also environmentally safe.

Depending on the location of your home and the demand for water - it can take a gallon of water anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days to travel from the Red River to your faucet.

Bob Welton is Fargo's City Engineer for Utilities.

"I think we have a water that meets every federal regulation and actually exceeds those regulations at this point."

The 30-million gallon per day Fargo Water Treatment facility was built in the mid-1990s...designed to provide pre-sedimentation, softening, disaffection, taste and odor reduction and filtration.

A manual and automatic state of the art computer system constantly gathers data and monitors the treatment process. Every four hours the water is tested by plant officials to ensure that the water is being treated properly and regulated substances are within acceptable regulation limits.

As the water enters the treatment plant, fish and small twigs are screened out. Welton says activated carbon is added to the water to absorb taste and odor compounds and with the help of chemicals, silt and clay are removed.

"Most of the red color of the river is coadal clay, that coadal clay is actually in suspension in the water and it really won't settle out unless you add a chemical to get that to settle."

With the help of gravity, water flows to the primary and secondary softening basins, where lime and soda ash are used to soften the water and polymer is added to chemically stabilize the water.

Welton says ozone is then used to destroy potentially harmful micro-organisms.

"Ozone is the most powerful disinfectant there is for disinfecting water and basically what you're doing is killing pathogens that might cause disease."

An added benefit - ozone also helps neutralize taste and odor compounds. The Fargo Water Treatment Plant was one of the first treatment facilities in the country to use ozone.

After the water is disinfected, it filtrates through more than 40 inches of sand, gravel and anthracite coal to remove small particles and additional hardness.

"If you had water that was completely pure, was just water, in other words just distilled water, that's what it is, you wouldn't like the taste of it." Welton says, "it tastes terrible. So you know, you don't want water that's got everything removed."

As the water is pumped to the storage reservoir, chlorine and ammonia are added to destroy microorganisms. From there the water is pumped to homes and water towers throughout the distribution system.

A recent usage study estimates that the plant will supply quality water to the Fargo area for twenty or more years.

Learn more about the Fargo Water Treatment Plant

FM River is two-year project is made possible by a grant from the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Other funded partners for the project are the Energy and Environmental Research Center, Prairie Public Television and River Keepers.

For more information on the FM River project or other projects, contact River Keepers at 325 Seventh Street South, Fargo, ND 58103; phone 701-235-2895; riverkeepers@I29.net.