Project Overview
The modifications made to the facility were completed in order to accommodate an expanding region as well as the city’s largest company, Ocean Spray. The facility treats 3-3.5mgd of wastewater on a daily basis. The treatment train consists of 17 lift stations located throughout the city, four of them pumping to the headworks at the treatment plant.
The project included a dozen buildings which were either built new, expanded, or remodeled. The sludge handling building and a new digester were built around existing tanks. The sludge storage tank was divided into six different compartments when the team built a circular tank inside of the existing one and poured walls inside of it to separate it into different sections. They also demolished portions of the interior of this structure. A new primary sludge pump building and an MBBR tank were constructed near the primary clarify. The inside of the digester building was demolished. A blower building was also constructed. A new final clarifier and a new sludge cleaning pad (where trucks deliver their loads) were built along with a new mesophilic digester and an existing chemical building was remodeled. Miron added onto the existing UV building and installed a completely new UV system, which provides the City of Wisconsin Rapids with a much more efficient system with a much higher capacity.
A few of the sustainable features of this project include use of an existing site and building reuse. One of the most sustainable elements of this project was the installation of a biogas generator. The generator converts methane gas produced by the plant into electricity. Therefore, when it comes to electricity, the plant is fairly self-sufficient. As long as the methane gas production is high enough, the generator continues the conversion.
From a design standpoint, and through the science of the process, the MBBR tank allows the city to increase their load without using up a significant amount of property.
Another unique feature was the conversion of a single sludge storage tank into six separate sections, which can now serve multiple processes.
This project marked the first time Miron utilized a new spray-on technique for concrete wall rubbing, in lieu of the standard manually applied technique. This allowed for increased productivity and offers a higher-end finish to the product, one with which the owner and engineer were extremely pleased. The team had weekly safety meetings to ensure safety remained the top priority and they also met with the owner, architect, and engineer on a monthly basis throughout the project. Once operations began in some of the new and remodeled facilities, this group met on a more frequent basis (weekly or bi-weekly).
The largest challenge on this project was keeping the wastewater treatment plant up and running throughout the course of construction (both additions and remodels). The facility was never shut down during the project. Therefore, this was a phased project and the team could only work on certain portions/facilities at a time. When one section was finished they would take a different portion offline to begin work. Continuous coordination with subcontractors and the entire team was imperative to the success of the project. In addition, work on the digester complex was the largest portion of work, required the most labor, and was constructed through winter. This added the difficulty of winter construction to an already intricate and involved process.
This project helped the City of Wisconsin Rapids meet a growing need for increased capacity to serve the demand, in particular, of Ocean Spray. It also helped the city save money due to the fact that they are now producing their own electricity to run their plant.