September 7, 2010 —     What has been a huge challenge for operations at the Morehead Utility Plant Board wastewater treatment plant is a matter of biology.

    But now the plant is back in compliance with all the discharge levels including e coli, according to MUPB General Manager Mike Nickell.

    The bugs that break down the sludge pumped into the plant off Bull Fork Road have not been at their proper level until recently. The count should be as high as 3,800. In May, following severe flooding in Rowan and surrounding counties, the count was well below 100. After the flood, the biomass (bugs) was destroyed because it was oxygen deprived.

    “We did not have any blowers until June 16,” Nickell said. “The blowers provide needed oxygen to keep the bugs alive. It has taken until the end of August to get our bug count back up. At present, we are seeing a bug count of 5,000 but this is a little misleading because many of them are dead and are being wasted off. The live bug count is between 2,000 and 2,500.

    “Even though this has made a dramatic difference in effluent water quality leaving the plant, we are still working to get the live bug count on up to 3,800,” Nickell said.     “Thank God, we are now back in compliance with all of our discharge parameters including e coli.”

    About 1.6 million gallons of waste are being pumped through the plant each day due to dry weather, Nickell said. Over a year the wastewater plant averages about 2.3 million gallons per day with peak flow well over five millions gallons per day.

    A little more than one-half of the wastewater treatment plant is up and running, according to Nickell. What is not at 100 percent is all of the redundancy or back up pumps and systems. 

    “It has been quite a chore just getting parts in,” Nickell said. “We have had to compete with other damaged plants for needed equipment since the flood. The United States parts inventories have been depleted for some items and we had to wait on shipment from Germany and other countries. Some items have had to be manufactured before shipping,” he said.

    Contents from the MUPB’s #2 clarifier and aeration tanks are being taken to Louisville. “We have approximately 1,000,000 gallons to get rid of,” Nickell said. “We do not want to take a chance of the contents of these tanks hurting the bugs and we are trying to get those tanks back up and running as soon as possible.”

    Three engineers – electrical, process and mitigation – are assisting the MUPB in three phases. It also is receiving assistance from a pre-treatment expert and a chemist.

    The mechanical part of the first phase is completed. That was to get the plant back in compliance with discharge limits.

    Phase two involves getting the lab functioning and completing work on the redundancy equipment.

    The sewer has been treated with hyper chloride since the flood, and then the chlorine residual is taken out before the sewer goes into the Licking River, according to Nickell. Both Ultra Violet units are up and running at 100 percent but they are continuing to use hyper chloride for precaution. 

    There has not been raw sewage discharged into the Licking River, Nickell said. The sewage has always received some treatment.

    The MUPB has had toxicity tests run to make sure nothing is killing the bugs, such as pesticides used on fields that could potentially have washed into the plant, and found that these tests came back normal. That possibility had to be ruled out, Nickell said.

    “We have been doing everything we possibly can to get the plant back up and running within compliance,” he said. “It takes a lot of time to get everything back up to speed. Looking at other plants to benchmark our progress, we are doing extremely well. Clarksville just started secondary treatment on Aug. 31, according to their local newspaper. We started secondary treatment on June 16.”

    The third phase is called mitigation. This involves steps to minimize damage or keep the situation from happening again.

    “We are looking throughout the entire plant to see how to cut down on future events,” Nickell said.

    The MUPB made immediate improvements to the plant’s flood gate, which failed in May.

    The plant board has spent more than $1 million to get the plant back in working order. Nickell anticipates total cost when improvements are complete could be as high as $2.5 million and following procurement state and federal law it could take nine months to a year to complete.

“The MUPB also has 129 years’ combined operator experience in waste water treatment and this has by far been the biggest challenge we have encountered,” Nickell said.