By Robert T. McMillon and Gary F. Rockers, City of Fort
Worth, Texax Water Department.
Mr. McMillon was President-Elect of the
Water Environment Federation when presented.
Water is as critically important today to the many people living in the Fort Worth area, as it was 150 years ago when the small military outpost was founded along the banks of the Trinity River.
The Village Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant (VCWWTP) in Fort Worth, Texas, continues the City's century long commitment to water resource protection. Village Creek serves a population equivalent of 1,000,000 people, which includes the City of Fort Worth and 23 neighbouring wholesale customer cities.
The plant has a rated capacity of 166 million gallons per day and uses a conventional activated sludge process. Raw wastewater entering the plant passes through bar screens, receives primary clarification, activated sludge treatment, secondary clarification, filtration, disinfection with chlorine and dechlorination with sulphur dioxide. Approximately 115 dry tons per day of solids are removed during the treatment process, and are degritted, thickened and anaerobically digested.
Since wastewater treatment began in Fort Worth in the 1920s, the organic solids resulting from the wastewater treatment process (biosolids) have never been buried in landfills as method of disposal. Instead, biosolids have been, and continue to be, returned to the Texas prairies and grasslands through an award-winning public/privatized beneficial reuse/recycling program.
Abridged from a paper presented at the Western Canada Water and Wastewater Association Conference, Edmonton, Alberta.