By Adriana Christianson

Weather triggering water issues at Buffalo Pound

May 28, 2015 | 8:15 AM

You might not see thick, green algae on the water at Buffalo Pound Lake but inside the water treatment plant, you can see slimy white sediment clogging the filters and slowing down the treatment process.

People in Regina and Moose Jaw are all being asked to conserve water until the water treatment plant can pick up the pace again.

The problems at the Buffalo Pound Water Treatment Plant are caused by an oversupply of oxygen in the water coming in from the lake. Ryan Johnson is the general manager at the plant. He explained that the oxygen is produced by the algae but it’s worse right now because of the different layers of cold and warm water in the lake.

“It’s a combination of the temperature, how early we had algae blooms – it’s a combination of a bunch of factors and it just happened to all hit us at once,” Johnson explained.

He says cold water below the surface holds more oxygen particles. During the water treatment process the excess oxygen and gas particles are attaching to sediments in the water causing them to rise to the surface instead of sinking to the bottom.

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“Our whole water treatment process is based on getting things to sink – so algae, bacteria, clay particles things like that,” explained “The flock particles are not sinking. They’re actually rising to the top.”

In the first step, a chemical coagulant is added to the water to cause all the organic matter including bacteria and silt to clump together and sink. Then the clean water is taken from the surface and put through a clarifying process where the remaining particles sink again before going through the first set of filters.

“When these particles escape because they’re floating, they don’t get captured so they get to our filters,” Johnson said.

Those filters are getting clogged with slimy white ‘flock’ particles. The filters normally run for 60 hours before they need to be cleaned. Under these circumstances, they have to be backwashed constantly through the day. At the worst point on Tuesday, Johnson said the water in one filter tank looked like grey snow because all the particles were floating to the surface. On that day the filters were being backwashed every four hours. By Wednesday, the water quality had improved enough to backwash the filters every 10 hours but it still severely limits the capacity for water.

Staff members at the treatment plant have tried about 10 different options for treating the water ranging from mechanical processes to altering chemical treatments. None of the options have been completely successful so far.

“Our lab is busy doing testing on some of our options. But we think we have one that may work and we’re rushing it in right now. As soon as it gets in we will set it up and test it,” Johnson said. “In the lab it looked promising but we don’t want to speculate that it will work in the plant because the lab setting is different from the production facility.”

Johnson said the engineer at the water treatment plant is also looking at mechanical processes to agitate the water in the lake to get more of the air out before it comes into the plant.

news@panow.com

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