New water treatment facility is up and running
by Trinity Gruenberg trinity@inhnews.com
The construction of the new water treatment facility began just over a year ago. It is now complete and up and running, supplying Verndale with filtered water. The approximate $2 million facility began operations on March 11. Paving and landscaping still needs to be completed. The city council hopes to hold an open house once everything is finished. The overall cost with the new well and water and sewer lines came to approximately $3 million.
The pipes inside are color coded. The water comes from the wells through a sage green pipe into a 21,000 gallon tank after first passing through a gravity filter. During the filtering, the water seeps through 18 inches of green sand and 12 inches of anthracite, a charcoal like substance. The water in this filter tank is a reddish color due to the chemical added to remove all the manganese and iron. After the water passes through the filter, it comes out perfectly clear. The filtered water is held in a tank and fed through pipes into the reverse osmosis units. This water treatment process removes contaminants from water by using pressure to force water molecules through a semipermeable membrane. The contaminants are filtered out and flushed away, leaving clean drinking water. This process eliminates the need for household water softeners. Chemicals are added to remove chlorine before the water hits the reverse osmosis units or it will ruin them. Chlorine is added again afterwards. A reverse osmosis unit has six 40-inch-long filters in each of its six tubes. Each filter costs $600. There are a total of 72 filters. . . . .