On Monday, April 15, MWH reached a major milestone by seeding the west process train of the $227 million Ina Road Wastewater Reclamation Facility (WRF). On Tuesday, April 16, secondary effluent topped the weirs on the secondary clarifier as the late afternoon sun reflected off the clean water. Approximately 90 minutes later, the water again crested the weirs at the west chlorine contact basin. This milestone follows the startup of the east process train, achieved in August of 2012. The project includes expanding the plant capacity from 37.5 million to 50 million gallons per day, and replacing and upgrading an outdated wastewater stripping plant with a state-of-the-art water reclamation plant.
The MWH commission and startup team is continuing to work their way through the plant to bring additional facilities on line as process’s allow, and plan to have the west process train fully operational in May, 2013. Extensive collaboration between MWH, the plant’s operation staff, designer and the owner’s project manager was crucial in reaching this milestone.
The team has been working diligently on the renovation and expansion of the Ina Road WRF. The original facility began operation in 1977 at 25 mgd, and was subsequently upgraded to 37.5 mgd in 2006. The west train facilities include a new state-of-the art blower building facility with two new 1,000 hp blowers; a new 14 million gallon bioreactor basin; four new secondary clarifiers; a new pump station; sludge and recycle storage tanks; a new WAS thickening facility with three new gravity belt thickeners; and new odor control equipment, all of which are fully automated and controlled by a newly upgraded Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system.
Along with serving as the construction manager-at-risk, MWH is also self-performing $48 million of work at the facility. This is the company’s largest self-perform 
project to date—in all, the self-perform team has operated a 20-to 85-person crew since March 2010, working more than 180,000 hours. To maintain maximum schedule and quality control, MWH is self-performing the most complex aspects of the work, including procurement, installation of process piping and equipment, instrumentation and control, and commissioning and startup.
The Ina Road WRF is currently more than 85 percent complete. Upon completion in October 2013, MWH will have successfully provided the infrastructure and backbone for the new 50 mgd facility.
For a look at the project, click here to view the Ina Road Wastewater Reclamation Facility YouTube video
