Example Treatment Facilities
What will Wastewater Treatment Facilities look like?
As well as thinking about the technologies employed within a wastewater treatment plant, it makes sense to be concerned about the structure and design of wastewater facilities. Plants can be built which take into consideration concerns such as viewscapes, surrounding environment and community. Treatment plants can even be built as multi-use buildings, functioning as a community centre, a park or a nature preserve as well as an industrial site.
The CRD is committed to the construction of wastewater facilities that satisfy each community's expectation for low profile, quiet, compact treatment plants.
How is it done?
Treatment plants using resource recovery technology can be pleasing buildings that are designed to complement a landscape. They often provide for additional uses, such as community centres, commercial or even residential space, and they can be found amidst residential neighbourhoods, where they blend into the surrounding architecture. Plants can be built to run with a minimum of noise pollution, strict odour control and using a minimum of land area.
Facility Examples
Lulu Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, Vancouver BC
This plant was designed in a traditional open layout, in an area where land was relatively plentiful and there was little residential development nearby.
Marine Park Wastewater Treatment Plant, Vancouver, Washington
Designed on more than 40 acres of wetland and greenspace, Marine Park is hidden from view by landscaping and architecture. It features advanced odour and noise control designs, and its operations are housed behind thick concrete walls.
San Diego Wastewater Treatment Plant
The North City wastewater treatment plant is the first large-scale water reclamation plant in San Diego's history. It can treat up to 30 million gallons of wastewater per day. The treatment plant employs hidden tankage and a closed building.
Proposed Brightwater Wastewater Treatment Plant, King County, WA
Under construction, the Brightwater Treatment facility will incorporate a compact layout design, which will incorporate natural resource protection, community viewscapes, limited footprint size and significant greenspace.
Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Plant, San Francisco, California
Oceanside was completed in 1993 and is San Francisco's newest treatment facility. The plant has a capacity of 65 million gallons per day during wet weather. Cleaned water is discharged via outfall to the Pacific Ocean.
Oceanside is unusual in that it was designed using bermed siting, which sinks the site below ground. The site is thus far less visible from surrounding areas.
Front Street Wastewater Treatment Plant, Bermuda
The Front Street site is typical of an enclosed design, which could be a useful model for smaller, decentralized treatment facilities in the CRD. Treatment sites in this category generally occupy a very small footprint (0.1 hectare in the case of this example), and employ superior noise and odour control, so that they can be located easily within the heart of a community.