Speaking

The City of Columbus embarked on a $2.5 billion plan to reduce combined sewage overflows throughout their collection system. A cornerstone of those plans is the construction of additional treatment capacity for wet weather flows at the Southerly Wastewater Treatment Plant. The City determined that chemically enhanced primary treatment (CEPT) with effluent mixing was the most practical and cost-effective approach. 

The new CEPT facilities will increase the treatment capacity of the plant by 110 MGD, to a total of 440 MGD. The CEPT facilities will only be used during storm events that require the additional treatment capacity. Designing plant modifications to accommodate this intermittent use, while considering the duration of storm events and flow variations with respect to operations, chemical feed, and cleaning were some of the most significant challenges for the project team.

The presentation will focus on those challenges and the collaboration between the project teams as they worked through them. This session will be presented by B&N’s Vui Chung, PE, and Seth Grimes from Arcadis.

B&N has partnered with the City of Upper Arlington, Ohio on a multi-phase Sanitary Sewer Evaluation Survey (SSES) to identify the most problematic sewer pipelines in the city and perform rehabilitation to reduce Inflow/Infiltration (I/I).

Following an extensive evaluation, B&N and the City outlined a fix that is expected to cost half of the original estimate and extends the remediation deadline by four years. The Ohio EPA approved the I/I reduction plan, giving the City more time for remediation and the ability to spread out funding for repairs.

In the One Water presentation, B&N Project Manager John Swartzbaugh, PE and Upper Arlington’s Assistant City Engineer Carla Odebralski, PE will highlight aspects of the project including:

• An overview of the project need and analysis. 
• The three-step approach to this project.
• The Sustainable Sewer Solutions plan.
• The lessons learned from the first year of construction.
  

The Village of Yellow Springs, Ohio, has been treating groundwater for its 3,700 residents since 1964. After studying treatment plant upgrade and replacement options, along with evaluating traditional and alternative project delivery methods, officials from Yellow Springs decided on a design-build format and new water treatment plant including softening as the best approach to address their future needs.

Although design-build is a relatively uncommon delivery method for municipal water treatment plant construction, it offered several benefits for the Village and the project. The project was completed in 14 months and for about three percent less than the $7.2 total budget.

For this session, B&N’s Sam Swanson, PE, will be joined by Brad Ault (Village of Yellow Springs), Vince Schwartz (Shook Construction) and Gary Williams, PE (Jones & Henry Engineers). Their presentation will cover project elements from the criteria engineer, design-build team and perspectives from the Yellow Springs operations staff.  Additional topics will include planning, public involvement and operational commissioning for the 1.0 MGD groundwater softening water treatment plant.

Each year, the City of Columbus Division of Sewerage and Drainage (DOSD) must manage and dispose of approximately 25,000 dry tons of solids from their two wastewater treatment plants. The City’s solids management program consists of a diverse portfolio of environmentally friendly disposal methods, including composting, land application, strip-mine land reclamation and offsite digestion.

While overall resiliency of the program is aided by the presence of multiple management outlets, the current strategy also carries large inherent risks as private contractors are responsible for disposal of nearly two-thirds of the City’s solids. To assess program risks, DOSD’s Overall Engineering Consultant (OEC) team has developed a dynamic solids management risk evaluation tool. With the assistance of the risk tool, the City can now assess a full range of potential risks associated with each management outlet.

Working with Black & Veatch, B&N developed a model to help the Columbus DOSD evaluate their program capacities and budgetary needs. Considering the number of variables that had to be taken into account, B&N created the model using the Monte Carlo method. Named after the gambling hot spot in Monaco, the Monte Carlo method is used to model the range of possible outcomes given the random, unpredictable nature of the many variable inputs.

In this presentation, Kevin Campanella, PE, from B&N, and Tyler York, PE, from Black & Veatch, will provide an overview of the project, and discuss how the model was developed, applied, and how it is helping the City manage its sludge disposal risks.