Water Pollution Control

Water Pollution Control On Wednesday, July 10th, 2013, at approximately 12:47pm, Mr. Tom Anderson led our group on a tour through the City of Akron’s Water Pollution Control plant. The weather was very humid, with a temperature of 84 degrees F, but felt like 97 degrees F. On this tour we learned that the purpose of this plant (which was built in 1928) is to take all of the used water and waste from the municipal sewage lines from Akron and the surrounding suburbs and run it through a cleaning process to remove the harmful bacteria, chemicals, particles and other pollutants, that come from our toilets, baths, washing machines, garbage disposals, sinks, drains, runoff from the streets and groundwater. The plant manages to do this by running the water through a series of operations, prior to releasing it back into the environment. The WPC (water pollution control plant) of Akron usually receives about 70-75 million gallons of water to treat a day. On days that it rains, over 100 million gallons of water is collected, because of the ‘combined’ sewers of the water runoff, through a pipe that is 110 inches in diameter. Though other wastewater treatment plants built their sewers separate from each other, Akron decided to build a combined sewer system because it was more cost effective. Once the waste water arrives at the treatment plant through many miles of sewage lines, it enters it’s first process called ‘initial screening’ which is used to keep material waste such as, diapers, dentures, cloth and plastic from entering the raw waste water area. After all the large waste and grit is screened and disposed of, the water is left with only about 1% of pollutants, which is treated with various techniques, including an aerobic process and followed by the use of chemicals, such as chlorine and bleach. The remaining wastewater is pumped to a basin or holding tank for additional cleaning. The basins typically slow the flow of the water down to 1½ feet a second, which