{"id":800686,"date":"2019-10-24T16:17:31","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T22:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=373465"},"modified":"2019-10-24T16:17:31","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T22:17:31","slug":"take-a-look-inside-the-dillon-water-treatment-plant-which-filters-141000-gallons-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/take-a-look-inside-the-dillon-water-treatment-plant-which-filters-141000-gallons-a-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Take a look inside the Dillon Water Treatment Plant, which filters 141,000 gallons a day"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Water Utility Superintendent Mark Helman gives a tour of the Dillon Water Treatment Plant on Wednesday, Oct. 23.<\/strong>
Liz Copan \/ ecopan@summitdaily.com<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

What would a day without water look like in Summit County?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the question officials in Dillon were asking community members as they opened the doors Wednesday for tours of the Dillon Water Treatment Plant as part of the Value of Water\u2019s Imagine a Day Without Water campaign \u2014 a national movement asking people to stop and consider the hard work that goes into getting one of our most precious resources from mountain peaks and rivers into taps and bottles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s important for people to find out that their water doesn\u2019t just magically appear, and that it\u2019s a very complex process that happens from the time we divert water to the time it rolls through your tap,\u201d Dillon\u2019s water utility superintendent Mark Helman said. \u201cSo this is about teaching people about that and providing that education, so they\u2019re more aware of how they\u2019re using that water. I think we all need to be more aware and educate ourselves on better ways to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dillon Water Treatment Plant is a relatively small operation, at least in comparison to some Front Range plants that Helman noted sometimes spread across 25 acres and filter through 50 million gallons of water a day.<\/p>\n

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Water Utility Superintendent Mark Helman shows the computer controls at the Dillon Water Treatment Plant on Wednesday, Oct. 23.<\/strong>
Liz Copan \/ ecopan@summitdaily.com<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The plant, which is responsible for distributing water to Dillon\u2019s 3,200 residents, is tucked away off Summit County Road 51 and Tenderfoot Trail Road. It is run by three town employees along with a lot of help from an advanced computing system that Helman called the \u201cmain heartbeat\u201d of the plant. The system monitors all of the facility\u2019s processes and maintains alert systems on about 50 functions to notify staff of any malfunctions. The alert system can even trigger a complete shutdown of the plant under certain conditions, such as a sudden spike in turbidity (a measure of water clarity based on particulate levels) or pH levels (a measure of how acidic or basic water is).<\/p>\n

\u201cDrinking water is highly regulated,\u201d Helman said. \u201cSo we have all these federal and state regulated limits on turbidity, chlorine levels, fluoride levels, pH and more as far as ranges we want to keep our treated water at. So we\u2019re shooting for this range and that range, and these all have alarms, and it can shut itself off in a matter of seconds so we can evaluate what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Dillon Water Treatment Plant employees take samples every day and test them at an in-house lab to make sure the computer readings are accurate. <\/strong>
Liz Copan \/ ecopan@summitdaily.com<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Of note, the town\u2019s water employees don\u2019t rely entirely on the alert system to take important measurements in the water. Instead, they also take their own samples every day at an in-house lab to make sure the computer readings are accurate.<\/p>\n

Helman said total shutdowns are rare but do occur on occasion \u2014 typically during spring runoff when the flow from Straight Creek is particularly dirty. Potential malfunctions aside, the plant\u2019s operations are fairly straightforward \u2014 functioning as a kind of assembly line.<\/p>\n

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Water enters the Dillon Water Treatment Plant from Straight Creek through this pipe.<\/strong>
Liz Copan \/ ecopan@summitdaily.com<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The source water from Straight Creek comes into the plant through a single pipe. From there, the water runs through a massive clarifier tank. The water mixes with what Helman called a filter aid, which essentially takes suspended and tiny particulates in the water and clumps them together for easier removal in the filtration process.<\/p>\n

For most of the process, the plant relies on gravity to keep the water moving, which Helman noted explains the plant\u2019s location downslope from the creek and upslope from Dillon. But during filtration, the plant ramps up the pressure to push water through the filter system.<\/p>\n

This is the only time in the process the water is separated into more than one pipe, splitting into one of three ultrafiltration skids. Each skid supports 48 individual filters capable of trapping particulates as small as 0.1 microns. For reference, a human hair is about 75 microns and a human red blood cell is about 5 microns. In Helman\u2019s words, the filters can capture particles that are \u201cpretty freakin\u2019 small.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The water is split into one of three ultrafiltration skids. Each skid supports 48 individual filters.<\/strong>
Liz Copan \/ ecopan@summitdaily.com<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Once the water exists the filters, it\u2019s all collected again into a single pipe and flushed into the clear well, a 20,000-gallon tank resting underneath the facility. It\u2019s there that the water undergoes chemical treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s for chlorine and chemical contact time,\u201d Helman said. \u201cThe water has to sit with chlorine for the disinfection cycle for a certain amount of time. That is the contact time, or CT, which is a big calculation with variables like volume, temperature, pH and a lot of different numbers that get plugged into a formula to give you your CT. \u2026 That\u2019s just to make sure nothing is growing in people\u2019s pipes, like algae. That\u2019s how we ensure it gets from here to people\u2019s homes in a sanitary manner.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is also where the town adjusts pH levels in the water to make it less corrosive, buffering the pH level from about 7.3 to about 8.4 using sodium hydroxide, or caustic soda. Finally, the water flows to a storage tank and into the distribution system.<\/p>\n

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Water Utility Superintendent Mark Helman gives Summit Daily News reporter Sawyer D\u2019Argonne a tour of the Dillon Water Treatment Plant on Wednesday, Oct. 23.<\/strong>
Liz Copan \/ ecopan@summitdaily.com<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWater quality is a big thing,\u201d Helman said. \u201cOur water quality is so pristine that our treatment process just doesn\u2019t have to be that involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

In total, Helman estimated it takes two to three hours for the entire process. The plant is capable of producing 1.3 million gallons of clean water a day, though there\u2019s hardly a need for treatment at that scale. Helman said the plant typically filters through about 141,000 gallons a day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the whole treatment process in a nutshell,\u201d said Helman, who continued to reflect on the impact modern water treatment processes have made around the country. \u201cIt\u2019s a cool process that I think people are starting to get aware of more so than in the past. We live in a privileged place where we can go to any tap, any restaurant and really almost anywhere and fill up your water bottle and not get sick. Safe drinking water has saved a lot of people\u2019s lives. It\u2019s good that we don\u2019t have cholera and typhoid, and we aren\u2019t poisoning ourselves with our own sewage. We\u2019ve learned over the years how to do some really interesting and smart things, and it\u2019s cool to be a part of.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Water Utility Superintendent Mark Helman gives a tour of the Dillon Water Treatment Plant on Wednesday, Oct. 23.Liz Copan \/ ecopan@summitdaily.com What would a day without water look like in Summit County? That\u2019s the question officials in Dillon were asking community members as they opened the doors Wednesday for tours of the Dillon Water Treatment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-800686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-27 13:14:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}