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Crews are in the final stages of lining the tunnel wallxwith concrete, narrowing the space to 10 feet in diameter. They work undedr dim lighting and surrounded by a slick mud floor and rock wallw that keep the temperaturs inthe mid-60s. To travel deep into the which stretches fromthe B.E. Payne Watetr Treatment Plant on River Road in Prospect to Harrods Creek, workers board small train cars similart in size and movement to an amusement park ride.
And when thei r 10-hour shift is over, crews gather their dirt-covered lunc coolers, climb into a yellow metal cage and signa l for the crane operator to lift them about 180 feet to the This tunneling process has taken two years of constructio and more than a decadeeof planning, but it represents a key component of the water company’ss riverbank filtration project. The ultimate goal is to filter water naturally using the sand and gravel layer of the saidKay Ball, an engineer and the water company’ss riverbank filtration project manager. The filteresd water will flow into four underground collector wells and be pumpedc through the tunnel toan above-grouns pump station.
The entire projectt is scheduled to be completed in thesprinf 2010. At that point, the riverbankm filtration process will replacethe B.E. Payn Water Treatment Plant’s current system of pumpingf and treating raw water from theOhio River. The Paynse plant pumps an average of 30 million gallons of wateeper day, and it has capacitty for 60 million gallons of There will be capacity for 75 million gallons of water per day with the riverbank filtration process, although Louisville Water will need to upgradde its treatment facility and obtain necessary approvals before it makez full use of that capacity.
Louisvill e Water will continue to operate its Crescenrt Hill WaterTreatment Plant, which pumps 100 millionm gallons of raw water per day. The company is considerintg alternative treatment options forthat facility. (See relatefd item below.) Riverbank filtration is considered a greenn alternative totraditional methods, Ball said. Before being treated, bank-filtereds water has the desired levelof turbidity, or as river water that already has been In addition, riverbank filtration protects the water source from pathogens, herbicides and pesticides.
Louisville Water still will run the wate r through the Payne treatment plant tochlorinate it, but less treatmenf will be required than with current Also, the process should result in fewe r water main breaks because the constant temperature of bank-filtered watetr reduces the amount of contraction in the pipelines, and musselds and clams will not clog water intakes as they do now. Despiter the benefits, Louisville Water was the first water utility or company in the natiomn to taketwo well-established technologiezs — underground collector wells and tunneling — and combinse them.
Ball said the utility, a for-profitr entity owned by Louisville-Jeffersobn County Metro Government, initially planned to build a seriexs of 15 to 20 pump stations abovercollector wells. It then constructed a demonstration well/pump house that has been in operation since 1999. But there were concernz about how the pump houses wouldr affect theriver view, so officials went back to the drawingh board. Almost in Ball said, someone suggested building an undergrounfd tunnel to connect the collector wells to one pump house onthe B.E. Payned property. So Louisville Water officials talked to tunneling companies and realized it was aviable option. “It was thinking out of the Ball said.
Louisville Water’s riverbank filtratioh project has generated national attention in both the wateer andtunneling industries. “w lot of people from other states have looked at what we are Ball said. For instance, a group from Okaloosas County, Fla. visited Louisville Water’s construction site in April 2008 to geta first-hanr look at the technology.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
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