How does WPC clean up wastewater?

WPC operates six (6) wastewater treatment facilities to clean up Huntsville's wastewater.
These facilities remove the "waste" from the "wastewater".

What does that leave?
Water, of course.
The water is returned to the environment, by being released into a creek or river.

To remove the waste, treatment facilities mainly rely not on strong chemicals or huge machines, but on tiny "bugs" called microbes.
(Although "bugs" is easier to say.)

The first step in treating wastewater is to remove the big solid objects.
Things like sticks, rags, and bottles somehow find there way into sewers, and must be removed.
These things are screened out and taken to a landfill for disposal.

Then smaller solids are removed in settling tanks called "Primary Clarifiers".
This process removes fine sand and grit from the wastewater.

Next come the "bugs".
In "Aeration Basins", oxygen is added to the wastewater.
Microbes in the basins consume the tiny pieces of waste still in the wastewater.
The added oxygen helps the microbes live, grow, and make more microbes.

Of course, too many "bugs" are not good.
Excess microbes grown in the Aeration Basins are settled out in a "Final Clarifier".
The water leaving this process is by now, very clean.

A final step before the water is released is to kill off the microbes that are still in the water.
WPC uses "UV", or "ultra-violet" light to disinfect the water.

After disinfection, the water is clean... probably cleaner than the creek or river that it will be released into.

To see an illustration of the treatment process, click here.
To download a printable version of the illustration, click here.