Bettendorf sending sewage water into Mississippi River
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By Alma Gaul | Thursday, May 01, 2008 |
Beginning at noon Monday, the City of Bettendorf began pumping about 60 percent of its daily raw sewage output into the Mississippi River.
The reason is that sewage from Bettendorf ultimately goes to the Davenport Wastewater Treatment Plant for processing, and, during periods of Mississippi River flooding or heavy rainfall, stormwater gets into the sanitary sewer lines. That increases the overall flow to a point beyond what the treatment plant can handle, said Dennis Ryan, the plant manager.
When that happens, the Davenport plant restricts what it will accept, causing a backup in the line for literally miles into Bettendorf. If Bettendorf did not divert the flow into the river, sewage would back up into manholes and could reach into homes and businesses, said Wally Mook, Bettendorf’s director of public works.
To prevent that from happening, Bettendorf installs four pumps that send 4.3 million gallons of sewage — about 60 percent of the city’s total 8 million-gallon daily output — into the river, he said.
“We have no choice,” Mook added.
That amount figures out to about 50 gallons of sewage per second, he said.
By comparison, water in the Mississippi River was flowing Thursday at a rate of 1.7 million gallons per second, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers calculations, Mook pointed out.
“So it’s miniscule when you look at it in this perspective,” he said.
Another caveat is that “raw sewage” isn’t quite as nasty as it sounds.
“People say ‘raw sewage’ and they think of a toilet flush,” Ryan said. “But mixed in with that is water from your dishwashers, showers, washing machines and cooling water from industrial discharge.”
About 99.3 percent of sewage water is “clean,” with 0.7 percent solid, he added.
Mook said sewage water will continue being pumped into the river for “at least a week,” possibly longer, depending on rainfall and how quickly the river gets back below flood stage.
Anytime there is a sanitary sewer overflow, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources must be notified, he said. That happens in Bettendorf a couple of times per year.
In Davenport, there has been no sanitary sewer overflow into the river related to the current flood, but there was an overflow during a period of heavy rainfall on April 10, Ryan said.
During the 2001 flood, there were six days when the plant was in “total bypass,” meaning sewage from the entire cities of Davenport, Bettendorf, Riverdale and Panorama Park went in the river, he added.
The Moline and Rock Island wastewater sewer systems are protected by levees, so Mississippi River flooding is not an issue in those cities.
In Moline, raw sewage does not enter the river even during periods of heavy rain, said Dennis Webb, the general manger of the water pollution control division of the city’s public works department.
That is because the city’s two treatment facilities — the North Slope and the South Slope — both have the capacity to divert and store overflow water in holding tanks or basins.
At the North Slope, solids settle out in tanks and the remaining water is chlorinated and cleaned to allowable limits before going back in the river, Webb said. At the city’s South Slope, water is held in basins until it can be brought back into the plant for regular treatment, he said.
In Rock Island, raw sewage reaches the river with some frequency during rainstorms because about 60 percent of the city is served by an older system that collects sanitary sewage and stormwater in one pipe, and if that overflows, the excess goes to the river, said Bob Hawes, the city’s public works director.
That may happen 50 to 100 times a year, with overflows lasting from minutes to hours, he said. But rain, not Mississippi River flooding, is the cause, Hawes added.
A new $66 million sewer system that is now entering the design stage will correct the problem, he said.
Alma Gaul can be contacted at (563) 383-2324 or agaul@qctimes.com.
Drinking water is safe
Although the flooding Mississippi River is flowing with a high level of contamination, your drinking water is clean and safe, said Lisa Reisen, of Iowa-American Water Co.
The plant itself is protected from flooding, and employees have added a third point of disinfection to the water as a precaution, she said.
“We are being extra-diligent to ensure that your water is perfectly safe to drink and will continue to be,” she said.
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