Operational History
The City of East Chicago has been providing a safe drinking water supply for its citizens since 1918 when the original water filtration plant was built at the north limits of the city. The original plant served a population of about 40,000 people. The filtration plant was upgraded in 1929 to increase capacity due to the growth of industry in the area. Then in 1964 a new state of the art facility was built to meet the still increasing demand due to the expanding base of industrial manufacturing. This state of the art facility has now reached the end of its lifecycle.
Due to the condition of the current facility and the more stringent requirements established by the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) major upgrades are required to ensure future safety, reliability and quality of the drinking water supply. The City of East Chicago has taken the first steps toward modernizing the filtration plant facility to ensure that both current and foreseeable future requirements can be met.
The current plans call for a three phase approach to be completed over a several year period.
Phase I improvements that were completed in the fall of 2003 have put the East Chicago Water Filtration Plant at the cutting edge in new and improved water treatment technology. The primary focus of the efforts embodied in Phase I involved a total revamping of chemical feed methodology, transport, and storage. Modern peristaltic pumps replaced antiquated chemical feed pumps. Fiberglass storage tanks have replaced aged, deteriorating, steel storage vessels. Chemical feed and dosage requirements are now controlled, and subsequently monitored, based on computer-generated data stemming from rates of flow to and from the plant. Computer-based information provides for more accurate control of feed rate and eliminates the possible manual over-dosing. Electrical modifications were put into place to provide emergency power to the chemical feed system in the event of a power failure. The use of sodium hypo chlorite as the primary disinfectant eliminated possible safety hazards associated with the handling and use of chlorine gas. Liquid fluoride has also replaced powdered fluoride.
On January 5, 2006, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) published the Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule – also called LT2ESWTR or simply LT2. The purposes are to improve public health protection through the control of microbial contaminants by focusing on the systems with elevated Cryptosporidium risk and to prevent significant increases in microbial risk that might otherwise occur when systems implement the Stage 2 Disinfections and Disinfection Byproducts Rule. The LT2ESWTR requires systems to monitor their source water, calculate an average Cryptosporidium concentration, and use those results to determine if their source is vulnerable to contamination and may require additional treatment. East Chicago must develop and submit a monitoring plan by January 1, 2008 and in April, 2008 must begin 24 consecutive months of source water monitoring. Like other communities, East Chicago is taking a pro-active approach and began source water monitoring in January of 2007. The test results have shown a Cryptosporidium concentration of zero (0) for the first three months. For more information on Cryptosporidium, its life cycle and effects on humans, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptosporidium
Engineering studies are currently being performed on the implementation of a relatively new water treatment technology in East Chicago. This technology is known as membrane filtration. In this application, water is forced through a semi-permeable membrane whereby larger particles are retained and water is allowed to pass through. This type of technology requires a smaller space than the existing treatment process. A new building that houses the membrane filtration equipment would be less than 50% of the current treatment building. Recently, a six-month pilot study was completed using products supplied by two independent vendors.