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Construction is more than halfway done and ahead of schedule on the second phase of Vancouver’s Marine Park Water Reclamation Facility that includes a couple of design changes to improve the facility’s efficiency.
By the end of the $20 million construction project, with the completion date possibly moved up now to the end of this year, Vancouver’s Sewer and Water Services will double the capacity of wastewater treatment at the site from 8 million gallons per day to 16 million gallons.
Begun in the spring of 1999, the project includes additional effluent pumps, two aerated grit chambers, a primary clarifier extension with three additional primary clarifier tanks, three large aeration basin chambers, two secondary clarifier pools and pumps, and a set of new large-capacity pumps at the outflow building to solve a problem at that end of the process.
“The city has done a phenomenal job building this plant,” said Gary Hulz, Montgomery Watson’s construction manager on site. “It isn’t like any other plant I’ve worked on. You can’t tell from outside what it is.”
Montgomery Watson Americas Inc. is a worldwide construction engineering firm based in Denver, Colo., with offices in Portland, Seattle and Boise. The company has been contracted as construction managers for several capital improvement projects for the city of Vancouver.
The facility was designed by CH2M Hill of Seattle and includes the final phase-3 construction that will increase the capacity even more.
In addition to the construction going on now, recently the city awarded a $1.2 million contract to Hickey Marine Enterprises, a marine construction firm in Vancouver owned by Cliff Larson. Hickey Marine will design, build and install an effluent outfall diffuser which will extend the outflow pipe into the Columbia River. This part of the project is scheduled to be completed this fall.
Two changes have been made in the design of phase 2. The first was to install pumps at the effluent outfall area of the process. Gravity does most of the work getting the water through the treatment process. However, it was found that when the Columbia River reaches high water, gravity is not enough to get the treated water out into the river. Sets of powerful pumps were added to the design to give the treated water a push in high water conditions. The main outflow pipe was altered and new pairs of outflow pipes were installed and merged with the main pipe at the east end of the facility.
Engineers also discovered that the aeration basin chambers, where the bacteria that eat waste are pushed through the water, could get the job done with fewer aerators. It was decided then that fewer aerators would be installed in the new chambers.
The design of the plant features a brick-veneered and blue steel-roofed facility, to match the architecture with the Water Resources Education Center in the area. The center includes meeting room facilities as well as a history museum of wetland and river environments and a visual explanation of wastewater treatment by the Marine Park facility.