Ak-Chin water treatment plant blessed

The Ak-Chin Indian Community Tribal Council held a blessing and dedication ceremony Tuesday for their Surface Water Treatment Plant, a multi-million dollar facility that went online in August.

It took five years for the facility to evolve from an idea – first considered when the community was considering building what is now the UltraStar Ak-Chin multi-tainment center – to a working water treatment plant.

“I can say that they did a great job both in the design and construction,” said Ray Paulver, water and wastewater operations manager.

By putting more equipment underground than above ground – the building height is 40 feet – the facility conserves space.

“This is a very compact plant,” Jayne Long, Ak-Chin Community capital projects manager, said. “You would not believe the maze of pipes and conduits that this site is sitting on.”

Every piece of equipment in the plant, for every process, is duplicated so if one component breaks down the entire facility isn’t affected.

The technology the facility uses was deliberately designed to be similar to that used in the wastewater treatment plant to make maintenance easier.

“That way for the operations staff, it makes it easier for them as far as the parts they keep on the shelf, or, if they’re rebuilding a pump they’re rebuilding the same one instead of having 17 different kinds,” Long said.

Also, when the equipment wears down to the point it no longer meets standards for drinking-water processing, it can still be repurposed for use at the wastewater treatment plant.

The staff who operate the plant “were involved very integrally in making the decisions on what we do and the processes we use,” Long said.

This resulted in design innovations.

For example, part of the treatment process involves water passing through long, straw-like membranes stored in a tank above ground.

“In order for the maintenance staff to be able to work on the membranes, they use the overhead crane and they pull the membranes out,” Long said.

The operations staff requested that a section of railing surrounding the tank be removable so the crane and crewmen would have easier access to the component.

“By having the actual staff that works in the plant sit in on the design meetings, we were able to utilize ideas that make sense,” Long said.

The Ak-Chin, who provides utilities for the community, can’t use groundwater for drinking water because it contains nitrates, uranium and other elements.

“So the decision was made that we’re going to take … surface water and treat it through the processes of this plant in order to have a safe and dependable supply of drinking water,” Long said.

The water comes from the Santa Rosa turnout of the Central Arizona Project.

The Ak-Chin Community uses it for irrigation, but two miles of dedicated pipeline divert some of it to the facility.

“We just patched into the pipeline … to bring the raw water down here,” Paulver said. “So the same water that they use in the canal systems for their farm irrigation is the same source water.”

The plant is an on-demand plant, meaning it only processes as much water as the community needs. That fluctuates with the seasons, but is currently about 500,000 gallons per day. That amount would water about 160 acres of cotton per year.

Currently, the Ak-Chin farm 16,000 acres of cotton per year, so the impact on the community’s irrigation supply is negligible.