As we reported, the managers at the Snyderville Water Reclamation District say they’re on time and on budget with an upgrade and rebuild of the Silver Creek Treatment Plant.
During their visit to KPCW, they talked about some other projects coming up in the near future.
District Director Mike Luers said their next major task is to deal with discarded medications and drugs in their effluent. He said they’ve done several studies on the issue.
“We’re looking into estrogens and pharmaceuticals and personal care products. The results of that study will not be in until later this summer, but that is on the horizon for our next project. What we're going to do, we haven’t decided yet. We need to have a little better understanding of when we would need to treat meaning during the low flow periods of the year, September August area. We might need to install equipment currently there are no regulations for us to do any of that, but we tend to be progressive and we don't want to cause problems with the environment.”
On another front, the District will keep working to extend sewer service to Basin areas that are now on septic. In Some cases, those are even well-established residential neighborhoods. Luers said that will involve a lot of digging.
“You have all your existing utilities in the way, so it's a very slow tedious process. Generally, you have to go behind people’s homes and fill in the old septic tanks. Now you need to bring a sewer line around the home to connect to the main wastewater line. Very, very costly and unfortunately, we do have a few subdivisions that are served by septic tanks that are probably aging and need to be replaced. That’ll be up to the residents of those areas to decide if they want to do that along with the Health Department.”
