Waste Water Plant Summary
On June 17, 2004 we went to the Vermillion Waste Water Treatment Plant and took a tour to see how sewage is treated. We met Fred our tour guide who first showed us the lab where they do all the testing for pH and other properties. There are many state regulations for a waste water treatment plant to follow and this is why they must test the water often. With all the sewage that they treat they use the methane gas from the sewage to power the plant but still need to use some electricity. He also said that if there is great amount of rain (as there was recently) it flows through the gutters and just makes more work for the plant.
The sewage water is cleaned by first going through a machine that extracts all the big clumps that wouldn’t normally be put into sewage - like clothing and other materials. Then after that it goes through a grinder which crushes the rest of the small things. The water then is gravity fed to a grease extractor dome and then to an organic material extractor dome. Lastly the water goes to a giant screw pump that delivers oxygen to the water and delivers it to an aeration tank which adds more oxygen to the water. After all the oxygen is added, the water is chlorinated by gas to destroy the remaining bacteria and then treated with sulfur dioxide to de-chlorinate the water before it is dumped out to the Vermillion River.
More information:
Ø The sewage extracted is used as fertilizer on a nearby farm.
Ø After testing all sorts of drinking water, Chippewa drinking water is best.
Ø The town’s animal pound is right by them, and they own two cats that roam freely but are taken care of.
Pipe that dumps the treated sewage water into the river
One of the methane gas pipes Photos by I. Dupris