The cleansing power of ultraviolet light will be used to disinfect water flowing from the local wastewater treatment plant into Dry Turkey Creek. The new system, only the third of its kind in the state is being financed by a $1,127 million loan from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
The wastewater plant superintendent said that no sewer rate increases are expected because they just had a rate increase recently which was the first increase in so many years. A 750 gallon of water used to be 65 cents but now, it has increased to 95 cents.
Improvements like this needed extra funding which is why rates increased not specifically for this project. A sludge purifying system is used in order to eliminate harmful bacteria and remove solids from water by the local wastewater treatment plant.
Into Dry Turkey Creek, about 1.8 million gallons of water a day is discharged after a three step treatment process that uses no chemicals.
The Environmental Protection Agency should make its standards for wastewater treatment plants higher in order to advance the quality of water in streams, as what the plant supervisor had said. He said that the water they discharge now is not disinfected.
In the past, they used chlorine as a purifying agent although it's a harmful chemical to work with. A safer means of disinfecting is the use of ultraviolet light before water is put into the stream.
He said that long fluorescent bulbs and a chain of ultraviolet lamps look the same wherein it is involved in the system. The number of lamps to be used is 12 and 24 in normal conditions and in high wastewater flows respectively.
The quality of stream water should have improved when millions of gallons of purified water were added which results to the elimination of pathogens in wastewater. The county already has a small ultraviolet light disinfecting system to treat water used on the city's golf course but will be sold to help pay for the new one.
To be able to buy expensive and useful ultraviolet treatment systems, according to the information officer of Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the state allots loan for these kinds of things. Using the state revolving loan fund, two communities already bought ultraviolet treatment systems.
The loan which goes on for 20 years carries a 3.03 percent interest rate. A microorganism's ability to reproduce DNA chains is what these ultraviolet light inhibits using a specific wavelength.
Before this effectively kills them, they will stop reproducing.
Ultraviolet disinfection is a nonchemical and nontoxic process that may be more costly on the front end, but requires fewer employees to operate. Chlorine in general is harmful to the health of employees which is why this disinfection is a lot safer to deal with.
The Environmental Protection Agency was kind enough to give out $200 million as a start up for the loan program. For the city's wastewater treatment projects to be properly funded, the state invested that money by letting it gain interests. According to the city commissioner, the new ultraviolet system will be in capacity to handle future growth.
He even added that the community on average disposes 1.6 million to 1.8 million gallons of waste a day, but the plant has the capacity to carry up to 3 million gallons.
The capacity of the new system that they are planning to buy is sizable which also has the ability to handle the entire discharge of the plant. Steady growth to the north is seen by 13,000 people in the city, according to the city commissioner.
To accommodate future growth, it even has plans to further expand its sewer infrastructure. Rates are not going to rise sometime in the near future. He said they analyzed their rate charges a year ago and increased them in small amounts to take new growth into consideration, and that increase should carry them into the future.
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