The water flowing from city taps should taste a bit better now that the city is phasing in a new treatment process.
Rather than using chlorine tablets, the city is using a solution of chlorine and peroxide to purify water at the city’s treatment plant east of Fort Lewis College, said Steve Salka, the city’s utilities director. The new infrastructure for purifying is helping to get a citywide water-monitoring system up and running.
“It’s probably one of the most sophisticated systems in the city,” Salka said.
The system started functioning early this month, and it should reduce the odor and taste of chlorine in city water. It will also allow the city to get rid of dangerous chlorine gas that has been kept as a backup water-treatment process.
Salka will be relieved to see the cylinders of gas get trucked away next week because if a container leaked the gas would cause severe chemical burns.
Injecting chlorine gas to disinfect water has long been a common and inexpensive treatment process. In recent years, it has been phased out in other cities across Colorado and in major cities including New Orleans and Los Angeles.
But there are still many Colorado towns using the gas, said Bret Icenogle, an engineering section manager for the Colorado Department of Health and Environment.
In the last few years, he said there has been one accident in Colorado. A chlorine gas container leaked, and an operator suffered respiratory burns.
“It can be a hazard for operators,” he said.
The state requires towns to have an emergency-preparedness plan to deal with a leak, he said.
Durango stopped regularly using the gas in 2013 when the staff started using chlorine tablets instead. The tablet system will now be the city’s required secondary system.
The city purchased the new treatment system produced by MIOX about six years ago, and at the same time, it finished a building to house it. Salka did not know how much the city paid for the system or the building because he was not the utilities director at the time.
But the city did not have the funds to hook up the system until recently. Up until last October, all the MIOX equipment was sitting in boxes, and the building had no electricity to function, he said.
“It was an erector set that I had to get going,” Salka said.
Now, chlorine generators are using salt, water and electricity to create a brine of chlorine and peroxide, he said. The peroxide helps limit chlorine odor.
This new system also may be cheaper and more efficient to operate because it uses salt instead of prepared tablets, Salka said.
In addition to helping save money, the MIOX system is also helping conserve water by allowing the city to track water usage and city infrastructure at all times.
The new water-treatment control room started operating this week, and it allows the city to monitor pumps and the flow of water across the city.
Sensors have not been installed at every pump yet, but the city has been able to catch thieves stealing water from fire hydrants and other water losses.
The system will also automatically call the operators in an emergency.
“It’s like having a night watchman,” he said.
The water rates hike in January allowed the city to invest in the new software, sensors and other necessary equipment for the control room.
Similar control-room upgrades are planned for the sewer plant although they are being phased in more slowly because the location of a new plant has yet to be decided.
Consultants recommended more water rate hikes in the coming years to fund more infrastructure upgrades. But now, at least some of the guess work is gone from water-treatment operations.
“This is leaps and bounds of where they were before,” Salka said.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
