When you flush your toilet, do you think about where that water goes?

If you live north of 92nd Avenue in Westminster, your toilet water flows to the city’s Big Dry Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility. This facility operates 24 hours a day to treat dirty water and produces two products: clean water that is released into the Big Dry Creek and a soil supplement called biosolids that is used on permitted farm fields in eastern Colorado.

In 2018, the city began a $23 million project to improve its biosolids product with a new dewatering facility at the Big Dry Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility. The project is now over three quarters of the way complete and is anticipated to be finished by summer 2020.

The new dewatering facility will remove more water from the biosolids reducing the number of trips biosolids are transported to the farm fields from 22 per week to four or five. The facility will remove more water with a centrifuge that will spin water out of the biosolids. The water that is removed is reclaimed by the facility for additional treatment.

This project will mean fewer trucks on the roads, increased safety for the public and reduced costs.

Learn more in this video produced by the Public Works and Utilities’ Utility Engineering Division.