Metro Water Recovery 2018 Facility Plan

Metro partnered with Hazen and Stantec to develop their 2018 Facility Plan. Metro serves approximately 1.8 million customers in the Denver metropolitan area, representing nearly one third of Colorado’s population. The Facility Plan is a utility-wide planning document encompassing the collection system, treatment plants, and biosolids land application facilities. The plan is focused on determining improvements necessary to meet the planning and regulatory drivers for a 20-year planning period and beyond.

Project Outcomes and Benefits

• Established planning framework that facilitated holistic evaluation of alternatives to ensure Metro drives toward selecting flexible solutions that achieve desired near and long-term outcomes.
• Developed flow and load projections over the planning period based on population projections while accounting for water conservation resulting in more concentrated loads and future phosphorus addition by drinking water utilities for corrosion control.
• Coordinated with Metro to layout the schedule for compliance with phased implementation of increasingly stringent plant effluent regulations.
• Performed process modeling to evaluate the capacity of all liquid and solids train infrastructure at both the 220-mgd Robert W. Hite Treatment Facility (RWHTF) and the 24-mgd Northern Treatment Plant (NTP) to identify bottlenecks requiring further evaluation.
• Conducted a comprehensive evaluation of alternatives to alleviate capacity restrictions and maintain the required level of service (LOS) for all unit processes.
• Developed conceptual designs for each integrated solution in order to evaluate process compatibility, constructability, technology maturity, LOS improvements, and Class 5 cost estimates.
• Collaborated with Metro to select the most advantageous solutions and develop 20-year roadmaps for RWHTF and NTP documenting the timing and cost of projects required to achieve facility planning goals.