Water Reclamation improvements continue for Rapid City's south facility

Rapid City's Water Reclamation facility.

The water reclamation facility in Rapid City.

Improvements to Rapid City's water reclamation plant continue despite its proposed finish date being pushed back to 2027.

Phase two of improvements is scheduled to begin this fall and will be improving the liquids and solids handling treatment process and equipment.

Phase one, which started at the end of last year, improved and restored clarifiers.

Clarifiers are settling tanks where floatable solids, like fats, oils and greases, will be removed by skimmers and sinkable solids, like silt and sand, are collected at the bottom by rakes and removed through a sludge removal system.

The third phase of improvements will be expanding the administrative building and improving the grounds, set to begin spring 2024.

It was announced April 2022 that the city received $145 million in loans and grants from the state for the improvements.

The project is being funded by a $43.5 million grant from the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources and a $101.5 million loan from the State's Revolving Fund with a 2% interest rate.

Starting this process back in 2016, a Facility Master Plan was prepared which identified the need for the current project.

The city currently has two facilities referred to as the north and south plants. The north plant was originally built in 1967 while the south plant was constructed in 2003.

The south facility is an activated sludge plant which Rapid City Water Reclamation Superintendent Dave Van Cleave says is a more reliable process and gets cleaner water.

This process is a multi-chamber unit that treats wastewaters using aeration and highly concentrated microorganisms to remove nutrients from the water. The bacteria is later removed in the secondary clarifier by gravity settling.

Eddie Lopez, Rapid City Operations Management Engineer, said the north plant is being decommissioned as a part of the project because it’s "met its life expectancy" and it's harder to maintain.

"Back when those facilities were done, the regulations were nowhere near as stringent as they are now," Van Cleave said. "So now we remove things like ammonia that wasn't required back then, and in the future, we're going to remove more ammonia; we're also going to remove nitrogen phosphorus."

By expanding capacity, improving systems and reducing equipment repairs, these improvements will increase reliability of the system, protect public health and save taxpayer dollars, the city said.

It also ensures system compliance with federal and state regulations and protects the water quality of Rapid Creek.

Relating to the increasing population, it future-proofs the facility and will support economic growth by providing a facility with room to expand.

"The ultimate goal as the population increases in Rapid City is to maintain Rapid Creek," Van Cleave said. "So essentially the product has to become cleaner and cleaner as the city grows because we have more and more water to dispose of into the creek. So, to maintain that standard of use for the creek we have to keep improving our processes."

The Water Reclamation Division deals with water that's been used, also known as wastewater. It's transported to the reclamation facility through the sewage network or by private septage haulers.

The water is then treated before it is returned to the water cycle through Rapid Creek.

This facility will provide treatment to about 120,500 people, mainly serving Rapid City, Black Hawk and Rapid Valley.

Originally the plan was set to finish in late 2026. Now, taking into account supply chain issues, construction schedules and weather, Lopez says they are realistically looking at improvements being done mid-2027.

“A lot of the planning happened in ’21 when things were the old way of doing things and now these past few years things have changed in the construction, schedule and material visibility, and we're trying to adapt to that.” Lopez said.

Rapid City Journal

Contact Mackenzie Dahlberg at [email protected]

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Rapid City Journal

Rapid City Journal

Rapid City Journal

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