$2 Billion Water Treatment for Sacramento

600 Workers Will Build $2B Mega-sewage Treatment Project in Sacramento

A massive project to upgrade the Sacramento region's sewage treatment plant is about to begin -- and it will employ up to 600 construction workers at its peak, officials said.

An official groundbreaking ceremony for what has been dubbed the Echo project is scheduled for May, but some preliminary work has already begun.

With an estimated price tag of about $2 billion, the sewage treatment plant project is expected to be twice as expensive as the new passenger terminal at the Sacramento International Airport and more than four times the cost of the future downtown arena.

"I think we are the biggest project in Sacramento County history," said Vick Kyotani, program manager for the Sacramento Regional Sanitation District.

The current sewage treatment plant, located between Sacramento and Elk Grove, was completed in 1982 at a cost of $460 million.

It cleans the waste water of 1.5 million in the greater Sacramento region and discharges it into the Sacramento River, near Freeport.

In 2010, the Central Valley Regional Quality Board determined that the plant was releasing too much ammonia, nitrates and other pollution into the river.

Since then, the district has been planning and designing the overhaul.

"It'll reduce ammonia in the Sacramento River," said Ruben Robles, the district's director of operations. "It'll reduce ammonia in the Delta, because that has had an impact, according to the regulators, on the fish habitat."

Much of the project will involve building a biological nutrient removal facility to the northwest of the current plant.

The BNR will cover an area the size of 20 football fields and will be a series of open-air tanks filled with bacteria and other microbes that ingest ammonia.

The district has already built an $18 million pilot facility to test the technology it plans to use, and determined it will meet the state's requirement for ammonia reduction.

"Like, 10 times lower at least, if not more," said Srivi Ramamoorthy, the district's water laboratory manager.

Another part of the upgrade will add a disinfectant process to the facility, designed to make the water cleaner for people who draw their drinking water from downstream and the Delta, including millions of people in Southern California.

"The entire program has an estimated budget of $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion and we're currently somewhere in the middle of that range," Kyotani said.

To pay for the project, the district has already increased monthly bills from $26 to $29 and plans two more $3 hikes in the next two years.

District officials said eventually, fees will rise to between $41 and $45 a month.

However, that is less than the $60 bill initially predicted.

Managers said the pilot project has allowed them to determine that they will not need to employ more expensive membrane-technology to meet the state's ammonia-release requirements.

Managers said the final budget is still in flux because of unknown labor costs.

Source: KCRA

Read More Related Content On This Topic - Click Here

Media

Taxonomy

• Treatment
• Waste Water Treatments
• Governance & Planning