After many months of modifications and adjustments, the Brown County Water Improvement District’s new microfiltration water treatment plant is finally operational.
The Water District attempted to bring the new water treatment plant online last year, but chemical levels that treat the water did not meet state standards. The engineering firm Freese and Nichols began implementing modifications to repair the plant in November and December of 2009 without success.
Engineers determined that adding a “rapid mix unit” to better mix the chemicals in the water plant would bring the chemicals to the levels that the state requires. Work has been ongoing since that time to install this rapid mix unit and bring the new plant online, and on Monday, a test mix unit was activated for the first time with some positive results.
“The mixer did work,” said Brown County Water Improvement District General Manager Dennis Spinks. “It worked well enough that once they fine tune it, we can sell water.”
Spinks said that it will take about 10 weeks for the permanent mixer unit to arrive. Once installed, this larger unit should be more efficient than even the tests showed which will allow the new plant to be fully operational.
Spinks said that the current plan is to shut down the older water treatment plant in the fall for maintenance and repairs and switching exclusively to the microfiltration plant for a short time.
The Brown County Water Improvement District owns the lake and sells water wholesale to communities in Brown County as the main water source in the county. Brownwood, Early, Brookesmith, and Zepher all buy their water from them and resell it to customers.
