News Briefs
"The Public Works Department selected Hansen because we felt they have a comprehensive system that includes the desired operations modules, and that it could be implemented in a relatively short period of time," said Peter Maguire, Senior Systems Analyst. "They have many of the features we were looking for already built-in which made it easier for the city to purchase the system."
The Department will be replacing a number of manual record keeping systems with the Hansen solution making it easier to track inventory, generate work orders for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance and generate cost reports. Plans are underway to investigate the feasibility of using mobile devices for completing electronic work orders in the field.
Mountain View's Public Works Department is responsible for maintaining over 166 miles of water distribution system, approximately 173 miles of sanitary sewer system, and approximately 80 miles of storm drainage system for residential, commercial, and industrial customers. The new system will integrate the customer service, work order, preventive maintenance, parts inventory, purchasing, and resource planning functions which should assist in streamlining business processes and decision support within the Public Works Department.
The new system will be used primarily by employees in the Public Works Department, giving them the ability to manage work activities and track customer calls from initial contact to problem resolution. But system information will be available to other city departments. In addition, the new system will be used to support the city's established geographic information system database that is used to display various components of potable water, wastewater, stormwater, and water treatment plant data. The system will help the department with project planning and to create work order maps.
Companies to Supply Ozone, Oxygen SystemPCI-Wedeco Environmental Technologies of West Caldwell, N.J., an ozone system manufacturer, has selected BOC Gases as its oxygen partner for the supply of an integrated oxygen-ozone generation system to the City of Dallas.PCI-Wedeco, a subsidiary of the Duesseldorf, Germany, based WBL Holding, was selected by the City of Dallas as the sole supplier for the integrated package as part of a major upgrade to the city's Eastside Water Treatment Plant.
The company selected BOC, an expert at providing water-treatment and industrial gas related solutions to companies and local governments around the globe, as the supplier of a 60 ton per day on-site oxygen generation plant that will provide the feed gas to the ozone generation system.
The ozone generation system will include nine individual ozone generators, each with a production capacity of 4000 pounds per day, or 76 kilograms per hour. The total ozone system capacity of 36,000 pounds per day will be produced at concentrations of more than 10 percent by weight using oxygen to maximize plant efficiency.
Upon commissioning in 2003, it will become the world's largest ozone treatment system for potable water, capable of purifying up to 450 mgd.
Ozone is a powerful oxidant, capable of oxidizing naturally occurring water contaminants that can adversely affect water quality. It is also an extremely effective disinfectant, eliminating harmful bacteria, viruses and protozoa such as Cryptosporidium and Giardia to ensure safe drinking water for consumers. More and more plants are upgrading to ozone treatment as an environmentally sound alternative to chlorine.
Randy Edmonson, P.E., Project Manager for the City of Dallas, said, "Putting in an ozone based treatment system at the Eastside WTP will ensure that we deliver the highest quality water to the residents of the City of Dallas. We wanted to make sure that the ozone and oxygen generation equipment were the best available in terms of performance and reliability."
City Plans Microfiltration PlantUSFilter is supplying membrane filtration technology for the first large-scale microfiltration plant to be built in North Carolina. The $900,000 Memcor® Continuous Microfiltration (CMF) technology by USFilter's Memcor Products will treat nearly one million gallons per day for the town of Carthage.Carthage is located in a growth corridor, close to Pinehurst, the renowned golf community. Over the past 10 years, the population in Carthage has more than doubled, forcing the local water utility to search for a new filtration technology to provide high-quality drinking water to all its residents. USFilter worked with the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (NCDENR) to demonstrate the applicability of the CMF technology. Since the water source for Carthage is a spring-fed pond, augmented with water from Nick's Creek, the company performed an on-site pilot trial program.
The Memcor® CMF technology uses hollow membrane fibers to filter suspended solids, contaminants, and harmful pathogens from the water supply. The system features a patented gas backwash system and in-situ integrity testing. It requires minimal operator intervention and has a reduced plant footprint.
The plant is expected to begin operation in March 2002.
New Water System Planned for Site of Olympic Winter GamesOnce again, USFilter will be supplying water treatment technology to the water company providing service for the Olympic Games.The company's Memcor® Continuous Microfiltration (CMF) system will be used to treat drinking water for the Summit Water Distribution Company, the largest water provider in the Snyderville Basin Area near Park City, Utah. Summit Water serves The Canyons Ski Resort, owned by American Ski Company, and the Utah Olympic Winter Sports Park, site of the ski jump, the luge and the bobsled competitions at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.
At the Summer Games last year in Sydney, Australia, USFilter systems were employed to manage the water quality in the Olympic swimming pools.
The $4 million system for the Utah site will be designed to treat 5.5 mgd. In addition to the Memcor® CMF system, it will include an inclined plate separator from USFilter's Zimpro Products to recover backwash water, and a chemical dosing system from USFilter's Stranco Products for phosphorus removal.
USFilter successfully demonstrated its membrane filtration technology by performing a thorough on-site treatability pilot study. The Memcor® CMF system verified its ability to remove a wide range of contaminants, such as suspended solids, particles, colloids, algae, bacteria, and pathogens including E-Coli, Giardia Lamblia cysts and Cryptosporidium oocysts from the raw water source.
USGS Launches New Web Site for Nation's Water DataThe U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has launched its new, online National Water Information System (NWISWeb) and in so doing opened the doors to the public to much more of the 100 years of water data collected by the federal earth science agency. The new website, found at: http://water.usgs.gov/nwis/ allows users to access several hundred million pieces of archival and real-time data."Our users can now gain easy access to over 100 years of water information, all with the click of a mouse," said Robert Hirsch, USGS Associate Director for Water. "This not only saves time, money, and effort for the user, but also allows our hydrologists and technicians to concentrate on collecting data and processing the information derived from it. We have been providing real-time streamflow and historical streamflow data on the web for several years now. What this new system does is improve that service and integrate it with many other types of water data including historical water-quality data from rivers and aquifers, historical ground-water level data, and real-time water quality, precipitation, and ground-water levels."
NWISWeb is an integral part of the USGS mission to disseminate important water-quality and quantity data to the public. These data can help water managers, engineers, scientists, emergency managers, recreational water users, utilities, etc. to evaluate current water supplies and plan for future supplies; forecast floods and droughts; and evaluate and control water quality, among other things.
During this summer's floods in Texas from Tropical Storm Allison, one home user logged into the real-time NWISWeb information to determine how high and how fast waters in his area were rising.
"We called our friend and woke him up soon enough for him to get his papers and photos up off the floor before he got 21 inches of water through the house," said Theodore Cleveland, who works for University of Houston Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "The real-time on-line data was a great help."
NWISWeb data comes from a nationwide network of more than 1.5 million USGS water data collection stations including:
- 338,000 water-quality sites where samples are taken from rivers or aquifers,
- 21,200 past and present streamflow sites,
- 7,570 real-time sites including streams, lakes/reservoirs, ground water, and meteorological sites.
- 1.37 million wells.
The USGS serves the nation by providing reliable scientific information to: describe and understand the Earth; minimize loss of life and property from natural disasters; manage water, biological, energy, and mineral resources; and enhance and protect our quality of life. For information about access to the wide array of other USGS data types (maps, satellite images, geology or biology data) go to the USGS home page at http://www.usgs.gov.
City Selects Engineering Firm For Treatment Plant ExpansionThe City of Brighton has selected the consulting engineering firm of Richard P. Arber Associates to assist with the expansion of the city's reserve osmosis water treatment plant. The plant was constructed in the early 1990s, and was the first large-scale reverse osmosis membrane plant in Colorado to reduce the concentration of minerals and other dissolved material in the water.The plant was originally constructed to reduce levels of nitrates and hardness in the city's water supply. The facility will be expanded by 25 percent to a capacity of 6.6 mgd making it the largest reverse osmosis system in Colorado.
A fast-track delivery process has been selected for the plant expansion so that the project can be completed by April 2002. It is important that construction be completed by April so that the additional treatment capacity will be available for high water usage during the summer.
The plant expansion is an important component of the city's plans to meet increasing water demands due to growth. The city is expecting to grow by almost 1,700 people per year over the next 20 years. The project will allow the city to economically increase water treatment capacity while maintaining similar levels of hardness in the its water supply.
Terry Benton, Public Works Director for the City of Brighton stated, "The project is a significant expansion of the city's infrastructure. We chose Arber Associates for this project because of their demonstrated knowledge of the city's needs, and their ideas for completing the project economically and on time."