The Fox River Implementation Plan (FRIP) is a roadmap to address water quality impairments in Fox River, Illinois. The FRIP identifies four main management actions for implementation to address water quality impairments dam removal, wastewater treatment plant upgrades, upstream load reductions, and tributary load reduction. This paper discusses the overview, stakeholder engagement, implementation obstacles, and funding sources for each recommended management action. It also describes an adaptive management framework for assessing the performance of management actions and responding to potential challenges. The information presented in this paper would be useful to wastewater treatment plants and stakeholders in developing their implementation plans to address water quality issues in other larger watersheds.

A regional super critical water oxidation (SCWO) facility has the potential to provide an economically viable, energy-neutral destruction alternative for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) able to accept multiple concentrated waste streams. SCWO is a physicalthermal process capable of destroying PFAS with the ability to capture energy from the destruction process for energy production, providing the opportunity to turn PFAS destruction from a huge user of electricity to an energy-neutral or even energy-positive endeavor. Energy production is fueled by high-energy waste streams, which could include granular activated carbon (GAC) media, and anion exchange resins (AER), and biosolids. This desktop study outlines conceptual design and economic analysis for regional SCWO infrastructure to handle spent media and foamate from industrial pretreatment systems.

The solids retention time of anaerobic digesters is one of the most important parameters for operational and design purposes. It has been believed to have the potential for process intensification with thermal hydrolysis pretreatment upstream. To assess the extent and impact of digester solids retention time reduction, the digestibility and dewaterability of three pilot-scale, continuous flow, mesophilic anaerobic digesters operating at 15-, 12.5-, and 10-day SRT were evaluated. These 10-liter digesters were fed with 9% total solids CAMBITM THP-processed primary and wasted activated sludge every day for nearly a year. The study revealed that shortening the solids retention time from 15 to 10 days linearly decreased volatile solids reduction from 60.7% to 53.6%, highlighting the reduction in hydrolysis rate as the major drawback. However, other digester performance parameters such as methane yield, rheology, and dewaterability largely remained unchanged.

UV LP and LED systems were compared in their engineering viability for an intermittent flow, 1 MGD average flow UV wastewater system at 65% UVT regarding resilience, sustainability, and risk. Resiliency to system cycling, sustainability via a life-cycle cost comparison, and risk of maintaining system performance guarantees were evaluated for LP, current LED, and future LED systems. Overall, this assessment demonstrated the feasibility and future optimization of these systems in wastewater disinfection. As UV LEDs continue to develop and enter the wastewater market, full-scale UV LED systems could help wastewater treatment systems reduce energy cost, labor requirements, and monetary risk. Advancement of UV LP and LED systems in treating intermittent flows with minimal energy requirements will help the wastewater industry meet climate change and sustainability initiatives.

In order to comply with the new ultra-low effluent phosphorus monthly limit of 12 µg/L, Powered Mill will, once completed, operate a state of the art water treatment plant with an upstream fish hatchery. Pilot testing completed earlier in 2022 included ultrafiltration with and without coagulant addition, ion exchange, and adsorption. The results showed that any individual technology was not capable of reliably meeting the phosphorus limit, but a combination of technology solutions could achieve the 12 µg/L limit. While the final selection is pending, the combination of ultrafiltration and downstream adsorption did meet the effluent limit while requiring minimal operator attention or chemicals; both of which are especially relevant in such a remote location. The pilot testing highlighted again the known challenges with measuring phosphorus at forensic levels. Split samples analyzed by different labs showed deviations as much as 100% between two results. This impacts both the evaluation of pilot results as well as future compliance monitoring and process control.

This paper shows the drivers and implementation approach we plan to use for partial denitrification anammox (PdNA) integration in the existing nutrient removal system at Blue Plains advanced wastewater treatment plant. Keywords: short-cut nitrogen removal, mainstream nitrogen removal, operations, process control, PdNA, fermentate, facilities planning, infrastructure Learning Objective: Understanding the specific application needs for implementation of partial denitrification anammox technology when using fermentate as a carbon source.

Limited process information is available to describe the stability and capacity of anaerobic digesters at the Clean Water Services (CWS) facilities. To supplement this information, a bioassay has been implemented to monitor the digesters operated at the Durham and Rock Creek facilities. Weekly bioassays have been conducted over the past two years. The results have allowed us to evaluate the responses of the bioassay indicators to usual operational conditions, such as changes to loadings from fats, oils and grease addition, digester startup after cleaning, and mechanical difficulties. The indicators show a response to changes to loading and detention time and the type of feed that could help understand the risk of failure, and help distinguish mechanical from biological causes of foaming events.

Gwinnett County, Georgia commenced an effort to identify the most appropriate structural and non-structural Best Management Practices (BMPs) to reduce nutrient pollutant loads that could be contributing to an impaired water listing for chlorophyll-a in Lake Lanier, the County’s water supply source. To achieve this objective the County developed quantitative and qualitative BMP characterization criteria, along with a scoring and ranking approach, that could be used as a basis for selecting BMPs that meet prioritized management objectives. This effort was developed and presented within an excel based decision support tool that allows users to input prioritized characterization criteria and receive ranked BMP recommendations. A web-based version of the tool was also developed. The resulting tool was used by county staff to select several nonstructural BMPs for implementation within the Lake Lanier watershed. Development of the tool also assisted in achieving compliance with obligations contained with the county’s MS4 NPDES permit.

The City of Omaha Public Works Department is undertaking a major water quality improvement program called Clean Solutions for Omaha, or CSO! which will improve water quality in Omaha’s rivers and streams by capturing or treating 85% of the average annual combined sewage volume through a series of projects. One of the major projects as part of this program is the Saddle Creek Retention Treatment Basin. The purpose of the Saddle Creek Retention Treatment Basin (SCRTB) Project is to capture combined sewage and store or treat it during wet weather events. This paper describes how wet weather storage and treatment technology was applied to attenuate excessive flows for the purposes of meeting the Long-Term Control Plan requirements for control of combined sewer overflows.

The City of Toronto has launched the largest and most significant stormwater management program in its history to prevent combined sewer overflows (CSO) from entering the waterways. The program includes over 30 km of new tunnels and storage shafts, a new pumping station, a Landform Project with a High-Rate Treatment Facility, and a new treatment plant outfall to Lake Ontario. The new Integrated Pumping Station (IPS) will replace two aging sanitary pumping stations and add a Wet Weather Flow (WWF) pumping system to pump Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) to a new high-rate treatment facility. The program will greatly improve the water quality in the Lower Don River, Taylor-Massey Creek and along Toronto’s Inner Harbour by treating CSOs and keeping them out of the waterways. This paper will focus on the design aspects of the new Integrated Pumping Station, highlighting some of the key construction considerations necessary to maintain plant operations throughout construction.

Food and beverage industries, such as breweries, discharge wastewater with high organic carbon content; the use of centralized treatment facilities to aerobically manage this wastewater is expensive and energy intensive. Industrial onsite anaerobic treatment systems could improve the management of wastewater and provide opportunities for energy generation and resource recovery. We have developed a two-stage system using encapsulated microorganisms for decentralized anaerobic treatment of brewery wastewater. We hypothesized that a single mixed microbial seed community could be encapsulated for reliable 1st (fermentative)- or 2nd (methanogenic)-stage treatment. Our research goal was to develop a robust, flexible, and reliable community by (i) adapting fermenting and methanogenic communities to several target wastewaters; (ii) characterizing the communities and identifying key members; and (iii) assembling and encapsulating these communities for flexible treatment of a variety of feeds. Results showed that the fermenting communities evolved after adaptation to different feeds while the methanogenic communities remained static.

Kansas City Water Services (KC Water Services) owns and operates a collection system consisting of approximately 2,200 miles of sanitary sewers and 600 miles of combined sewers. The City is under a Consent Decree (CD) and is in its 13th year of implementing a long-term overflow control plan (LTCP) to reduce the volume of combined sewer overflows (CSOs) city wide. This paper focuses on the design and construction of a sewer separation project to eliminate a combined sewer outfall in one of the oldest combined sewer systems in Kansas City. The project team identified three key takeaways from the project including the importance of system characterization to accurately define the combined sewershed boundaries, ways to costeffectively address private property sewer separation, and the impact that level of service improvements can have on stakeholder acceptance of the project. The accomplishments, challenges, and lessons learned during this project are applicable to CSO communities looking for a straightforward, practical, cost-effective approach to public and private sewer separation.