Wastewater Treatment Facility

The City of Huron, South Dakota, a community of just over 14,000 people in Beadle County, is actively preparing for its future growth. The City's existing wastewater treatment facility, which dated back to the 1930's, was nearing the end of its useful life and was undersized for the City's future needs. In addition, increasing population, more stringent regulatory effluent requirements, and the City's desire to provide treatment capacity for future economic development opportunities, prompted the need for improvements to the City's wastewater treatment facility.

The City completed a Facility Plan in 2019 to analyze future wastewater flows and loadings, summarize existing major equipment replacement needs, and to evaluate wastewater treatment alternatives. As part of the Facility Plan, the City elected to move forward with a sequencing batch reactor (SBR) treatment process. With extensive recent SBR experience, DGR Engineering was selected to work alongside the City to evaluate the various SBR manufacturers based on site visits, manufacturer presentations, and past experiences. The City determined a flow-through style SBR system to be the preferred choice, based on the jointly-developed selection criteria and the ability to meet anticipated permit limits.

In addition to constructing a new four-cell SBR, the project consisted of rehabilitation to the existing preliminary treatment building (including replacement of the existing mechanical bar screen and vortex grit removal system), HVAC improvements, gate and plate replacement, and the addition of an anaerobic cell lift station. A full-plant supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system was incorporated in the project for remote monitoring.

The new facility, rated for 8.0 million gallons per day (peak day), nearly doubles the capacity of its predecessor. The expanded capacity will provide for for future population and industrial growth as well as economic development.

Construction began in 2021 and was substantially complete in 2023. The $12.8 million construction costs were financed through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF)

Project Approach

• Jointly worked with the client to evaluate various treatment alternatives to select an option that meet the client's treatment goals at an affordable cost.
• Evaluated several locations for the SBR location and the impact on future downstream processes for more stringent regulations.
• Analyzed existing infrastructure and process control to determine simplified alternatives.