Williams Lake City Council voted in the use of chloramines as the source of secondary disinfection for the water treatment plant in last night’s, November 19, council meeting.
The decision came down to two options for secondary disinfection finding a naturally-occurring organic-materials that could cause harmful carcinogenic byproducts when mixed with the high levels of chlorine the treatment plant would be using.
Adapting the use of chloramines, adding ammonia to the chlorine would not have any byproducts with the organic materials, and keep the treatment plant’s construction on time and on budget.
Council did hesitate at the engineering note in the report that the use of Chloramines will require more ‘operational efforts’ with having to mix the ammonia into the water at appropriate levels. Council asked if there would be extra steps, and extra costs, to monitor the ammonia levels.
Jeff Bernardy, Senior Engineering Technologist on City Staff said that those extra steps have already been looked into by the Associated Engineering team.
“There are automation, and engineering factors that we put in place to prevent things like having too much ammonia, or two little, and there are back ups for those systems.”
Even with the added infrastructure to automate and control the ammonia levels, the engineering team is confident that the project will come in at the already proposed and funded budget.
Council approved the use of chloramines in the water treatment plant will now direct the Associated Engineering team to continue to the next phases of development.
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