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The City of Cle Elum completed the construction of a new 3.6 million gallon per day Sequential Batch Reactor (SBR) wastewater treatment plant in the spring of 2005. This new SBR plant, which is called the Upper Kittitas County Regional Wastewater Treatment Facility (WWTF) has replaced the old lagoon treatment system and it now provides wastewater treatment for the following entities:
- City of Cle Elum
- Town of South Cle Elum
- City of Roslyn
- City of Ronald (and it’s nearby unincorporated areas)
- Suncadia Resort
Treatment facilities were designed to handle a planned 30-year build out with an expected service population equivalency of 18,956. As of February 2010 the estimated service population is 4,614.
An SBR is a biological wastewater treatment system in which all the major process steps such as flow equalization, aeration and clarification; occur sequentially within the same tank. Wastewater first enters the treatment facility at the influent pump station. Here the flow is pumped through a screening and grit removal system in the first process step called primary treatment. These filtered solids materials are collected and hauled to the local landfill for permitted disposal.
In the secondary treatment process, flow is directed into one of two SBRs where through a simple biological treatment process, the wastewater is naturally broken down even further. The remaining solids materials, called sludge, is separated and pumped directly to a double -lined treatment lagoons for further aeration (for odor control), natural dewatering and eventual disposal via permitted land application as fertilizer. The resulting treated water, called effluent, then flows into an equalization basin where it receives further aeration before it is directed through a final ultra-violet disinfection treatment system. The clean effluent is metered and discharged directly into the Yakima River over a constructed rock drop outfall for even further aeration and treatment.
The WWTF has been operated by Veolia Water North America (Veolia Water) through a successful public/private partnership operational contact since 2003. Veolia Water is the leading provider of comprehensive water and wastewater partnership services to municipal and industrial customers, servicing more than 14 million people in approximately 650 North American communities with over 30,000 employees. Veolia’s parent company, Veolia Environment is a global leader in water and wastewater industry, with operations on every continent and with over 336,000 employee’s worldwide. Visit the company’s Web sites at: www.veoliawaterna.com.