Rex Moffat (left) and Eric Hadley walk between two of the Wastewater Treatment Plant’s aeration basins.

Rex Moffat (left) and Eric Hadley walk between two of the Wastewater Treatment Plant’s aeration basins.

BLACKFOOT — The Blackfoot Wastewater Treatment Plant was massively upgraded in 2021 and the city is in the planning stages of installing more upgrades.

The upgrades were completed at the end of last year, including improvements to the headworks station with screening for grit and solids removal, an air cleaner for odor control, upgrades to the secondary clarifier, and a new UV building with piping, among many other improvements. They also upsized 11,000 feet of pipe from the freeway to the plant.

Once they’ve finished the design stage of planning the upgrades, construction could start as early as 2025 but more likely by 2026.

Rex Moffat, the superintendent of the Wastewater Treatment Plant, said it’s not entirely certain when the plant was established, because while they have records that point to 1962, they also “have records of sewer pipe that was installed in the early ‘30s, so what probably was here was just a lagoon system,” Moffat said.

“Lagoons are great for smaller systems when you don’t have much flow but as soon as you start getting more flow you have to upgrade to more equipment that will do the same process in a smaller footprint,” said Eric Hadley, the plant supervisor.

“What happens here happens naturally in nature, we’re just making it do more in a smaller space in quicker time,” Moffat said.

Moffat pointed out how with a larger water system

If the wastewater plant did not exist, then Blackfoot could expose the water system to all of its sewage and waste. It would infect water users with a whole host of problems, such as cholera, diphtheria or E. coli among others.

“Everything that we’re putting out into the river is going back into the aquifer or the reservoirs, so you’d be putting dirty water contaminated with just everything,” Hadley said.

The first step of the process begins at the headworks station, where sewage water from Blackfoot, Groveland, Moreland and anyone who’s connected to the sewage system flows. They also have a septic system where the tanks are pumped and the waste is transported to the plant.

This is where solid organic materials end up, like flushable wipes, feminine hygiene products, or even toys. At that point they have a spray washer that cleans them before they compact them to transport the compacted waste to the landfill.

In the upgrade process they installed an air cleaner that “pulls the smelly air from inside the room here and we’re cleaning it so we’re putting out clean air so it’s not as bad for the neighbors,” Hadley said. “It has dramatically decreased the smell that you get in here from what we had before.”

The still dirty water then passes through to the primary clarifier, where “water flows over and out the top of the ring, the solids that will settle go down to the bottom or are pumped out of the bottom down to the other end of the plant,” Moffat said.

The water then moves to the three aeration basins, which have bacteria that’s “eating everything we want it to eat out of the water. Human waste, phosphorus, ammonia, things that (we) are trying to control,” Hadley said.

Then the water moves to the polishing clarifiers, where the final cleaning of the water happens. The water doesn’t become potable, but it is made safe for reuse for things like irrigation and flushing toilets.

Theoretically, this could save water if it was reused for agriculture, because, “They’re not pumping from the aquifer, they’re not using city water,” Hadley explained.

The final step of the process is when the water flows to the UV building. The ultraviolet light kills anything that’s left in the water. When they perform tests on this water, they find that it’s cleaner than the river water. Then the water flows out into the river, rejoining the water system.

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