American Falls Breaks Ground On Water Treatment Plant
The city of American Falls is looking to the future by breaking ground on it’s $12.5 million waste water treatment plant.
And as the ground broke, the city’s employees celebrated.
“We are ecstatic. This is a day we’ve been waiting for for a long time. I almost can’t believe it, because we’ve been working on it for so long,” said Mayor Amy Manning.
Manning said the City Council realized the waste water treatment plant was a problem when it started thinking about economic development.
“American Falls is the best place on Earth, so to bring people here and to bring in more businesses, we’d have to increase our capacity at the treatment plant,” Manning said.
With approximately 600,000 gallons of water pumping through it every day, the current facility runs at just below capacity.
“And if your treatment facility cannot accommodate the growth, you can’t grow. You’ve got to have the capacity in your treatment facility to handle any type of growth,” said Waste Water Superintendent Pete Cortez.
In the current headworks facility, the machinery is held together by rust and strings. The state-of-the-art plant that is being built will vacuum waste water through filter plates and treat organic waste without outdoor drying beds, cutting down on the smell.
Environmental stewardship is a big part of the project. The water from the plant already gets dumped into the Snake River, but after it gets filtered through the new plant, that water that gets dumped will be clean enough to drink, Cortez said.
One of the biggest challenges is keeping the crumbling facility operational and up to code while the new plant is built, but Cortez said, with the new plant able to handle double the water it can now, this will mean big things for American Falls.
“Oh we’re going to be able to clean our water so good,” he said.
American Falls is funding the project largely through a $3 million USDA grant and an $8 million USDA low-interest loan. The Department of Environmental Quality also loaned American Falls $1 million and the city itself is putting up $800,000.
