After leaving your house, wastewater travels through the City’s collection system via its own set of pipes—which your drinking water never goes through. The wastewater will be cleaned at one of two treatment plants. The Big Dry Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility, located in the northeast corner of the city, serves about two thirds of our community. As for southern residents, Westminster partners with the Metro Wastewater Reclamation District to treat wastewater from their homes and businesses.
We can’t just dump wastewater out into the wild—not only is it illegal, it’s also unsanitary. Instead, our crews must clean the wastewater before releasing it back into local streams. The federal Clean Water Act sets water quality standards that every community must meet before releasing treated wastewater back to the environment. Westminster’s permit contains limits on temperature, copper, mercury, E.coli, pH and many other parameters.
Here’s something that’s pretty cool about our Big Dry Creek treatment plant: “bugs” work alongside humans to clean the water. Instead of using chemicals to treat our wastewater, we use an entirely biological treatment process. Special bacteria feed on nutrients in the wastewater and remove them. This treatment process would occur naturally, but much more slowly, so the primary job of the treatment plant operators is to make sure these “bugs” are as happy as can be. This means maintaining the optimal amount of food (wastewater), shelter (warm tanks) and air (lots of extra bubbles) for the bacteria to act like it’s Thanksgiving every day of the year.
In short: the facility converts wastewater into three beneficial products:
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