water treatment plant
New Water Treatment Plant

Vision Becomes Reality
Iowa Lakes Regional Water's Osgood Water Treatment Plant
Project Owner:
Iowa Lakes Regional Water
Key Experience:
- RD Water and Waste Disposal Loan and Grant Program Funding
- Piloted technology to prove concept
Key Features:
- Direct treatment reverse osmosis water treatment plant
- 750,000 gpd capacity, expandable to 2.25 MGD
- Utilizes shallow alluvial wells located approximately 2.5 miles away from the plant
- Membraned system provides a modular style construction that allows for easy expansion
Iowa Lakes Regional Water (ILRW) provides water service to small communities and nearly 5,000 rural residents in northwest Iowa. The ILRW system encompasses over 200 square miles of service area in all or parts of Dickinson, Emmet, Clay, Palo Alto, Buena Vista, Sac and Cherokee Counties in Iowa and Jackson County in Minnesota. Water demands within the ILRW system are diverse, from high residential and tourism demands in the Lake Okoboji and Big Spirit Lake areas in the northern part of the system, to rural residential and large agricultural demands in the remainder of the system.
The Lakes area of the ILRW system has experienced significant growth as it has become a popular tourism location for residents of the upper Midwest. As ILRW developed the Lakes Area, they initially purchased water from a municipal system that treated surface water from Lake Okoboji. This source was an economical option to get the new distribution system started, but recent changes in surface water treatment has led to rising treatment costs and challenges with increasing disinfection byproduct concentrations. ILRW had the goal to provide this area and other rural customers with a higher quality and more economical water source than what they received from their bulk sources. A new treatment plant, the "Osgood" water treatment plant, fulfilled that goal.
The development of the Osgood water source has been a goal of ILRW for decades. As ILRW developed the eastern side of its system, ILRW and DGR Engineering (DGR) worked together to design and install transmission capacity capable of incorporating the Osgood water source, knowing that the new WTP would be needed in the future. The three goals of the project were as follows: to gain independence from purchased water sources, to provide high quality water to existing customers, and to accommodate system growth.
The plant is located along the Des Moines River between Graettinger and Emmetsburg, Iowa. The well field is in a shallow alluvial aquifer approximately 40 feet deep located 2.5 miles east of the water treatment plant and on the eastern side of the Des Moines River. The water treatment plant is located on the western side of the river at a much higher elevation and out of the flood plain of the river. Osgood has a capacity of 750,000 gallons per day and is easily expandable to 2.25 MGD.
The project was developed using the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development’s (RD) Water and Waste Disposal Loan and Grant Program, which has been the primary funding source for many ILRW projects. ILRW was able to obtain a loan and grant package from RD that enabled the project to be affordable to existing ILRW customers without having to raise rates.
All of ILRW's existing sources provided softened water, so it was prudent that any process considered incorporate softening. Hardness removal can be achieved through precipitation within conventional processes (lime softening), ion exchange, or non-conventional processes such as electrodialysis and membranes.
During the preliminary engineering report phase, ILRW and DGR evaluated three alternatives to achieve the treated water quality goals:
• Lime softening
• Nanofiltration/reverse osmosis (RO) with pretreatment
• Nanofiltration/reverse osmosis direct treatment
Many alternatives were considered but a direct treatment reverse osmosis water treatment plant was selected due to the lowest initial capital investment and ease of operation. The membraned system also provides a modular style construction that allows for easy expansion as system demands increase.
Reverse osmosis treatment without pretreatment for iron and manganese removal may not always be successful, so the technology was piloted to prove the concept would work. The pilot demonstrated that the water source was a great fit for direct treatment by reverse osmosis. In addition to iron, manganese, and hardness removal, softening membranes have an added benefit of removing other contaminants, such as nitrate, which is always a concern with shallow alluvial aquifers in agricultural settings. Nitrate levels are currently below the EPA's MCL, but test drilling showed elevated levels near the well field.
Not all membrane equipment suppliers are advocates of direct treatment, and so to ensure a successful project, ILRW decided to procure the membrane equipment prior to final design. The equipment procurement process allowed ILRW to make a selection of the equipment manufacturer based on qualifications, construction cost and operating costs, and allowed the equipment manufacturer to join the design team for final design.
The project was bid at the beginning of the pandemic (April 23, 2020) with very competitive bids. Six bids were received on the project with all bids being within 5.5-percent of the low bidder. The project was awarded to John T. Jones Construction Company on June 26, 2020, and substantial completion on the project was granted on January 25, 2022.
While direct treatment with softening membranes is not uncommon in and of itself, this project was unique in that it utilized shallow alluvial wells located approximately 2.5 miles away from the treatment plant. Due to the long raw water pipeline, ILRW and DGR determined that best practices would be to include a means to pig (clean the inner walls of pipes) the raw water pipeline in the final layout.
Based on the pilot water quality results and operating pressures, a hybrid skid was designed which utilized two different styles of membranes in each stage to target different contaminants. The RO skid was also designed for two half-sized trains on one frame to minimize the footprint and reduce overall capital costs. The half-sized trains allowed the plant to operate for a longer duration during low demand and minimize the amount of water wasted during the raw water pipeline flush period between startups/shutdowns. Thirdly, two treatment trains on one skid allowed for redundancy of the treatment equipment.
Treated water quality from the new Osgood WTP is summarized in the following table:
As indicated in the table above, the Osgood WTP produces high quality water for the customers of ILRW, a quality unmatched by most water systems. The water quality produced by Osgood is equivalent to the water quality produced by ILRW’s other water treatment plant, providing customers with consistent water quality regardless of water source. The consistent water quality has significantly reduced taste and odor complaints because the use of other bulk water sources has been significantly reduced. Osgood has reduced ILRW’s dependency on outside water sources, reduced operational costs, and set ILRW up to provide water for future demand growth.


Featured Projects
- All
- Aviation
- Civil
- Electrical Power
- Survey
- Wastewater
- Water
New Water Treatment Plant
New Water Treatment Plant delivers higher quality and more economical water.
Osgood, IA
New Water Distribution System
The City’s residents enjoy high quality water that comes to them in a new and reliable distribution system.
Revere, MN
Site Development, Utility Improvements
A multi-phase plan for infrastructure projects was developed for the City of Alton.
Alton, IA
Neighborhood Reconstruction
Health, safety and public welfare were all improved by this project.
Brandon, SD
The rural residents around North Sioux City and Elk Point South Dakota can find as much water as they want, just by sinking a well anywhere in the Missouri River Alluvial Valley. The problem is that the “good water” in this area, which is lower in iron and manganese, is laced with radium. Rural communities like Wynstone and Sandy Meade were faced with the challenge of Radium removal to protect their customers.
Clay Rural Water System partnered with these developments and the surrounding rural customers to bring Radium Free water to over 500 homes. These residents dealt with contaminated drinking water for decades, and now have confidence in the water they are drinking. DGR Engineering worked with Clay Rural Water System to construct a reverse osmosis water treatment plant to take water with raw water combined radium 226 + 228 of 12.4 pCi/L down to below detection limits of <1.0 pCi/L. These customers have been receiving this safe drinking water now for over a decade.
The plant treats the deep well water directly with reverse osmosis without pre-treatment, even though the raw water has high iron and manganese levels. This innovative treatment approach saved significant construction and operational costs for the water system.
Construction of a bolted steel glass lined tank, foundations, and miscellaneous appurtenant work. Nominal size is 300,000 gallons, 36′ diameter, 38′ high.
The ground storage reservoir is a critical component of the water treatment process, allowing flow equalization between the filtration process and the softening system.
The City of Estherville operates an iron and manganese removal and zeolite softening facility. The plant had adequate softening capacity for growth, but had exceeded the rapid sand filtration capacity of the facility. The expansion was rated at 1,200 gpm and included the following work:
Construction of a water treatment plant expansion of 1200 gpm capacity, including concrete gravity filter cells, masonry building, yard and process piping, line shaft turbine high service and backwash pumps, horizontal split case transfer pumps, HVAC, electrical and control, site work and miscellaneous appurtenant work.