The smell of technology

by: Caitlin Lawrence, Public Information Officer, City of Panama City

AIf you’ve ever been through the area of W. 23rd

Street or Michigan Avenue in Panama City, you’ve probably thought or even said out loud what is that smell? It’s often described as rotten eggs, a smell emitted from the St. Andrews Wastewater Treatment Plant, located at 2226 Michigan Avenue.

In addition to the smell, people have likely also heard the sounds of construction going on at the plant in the last year. The facility, which was originally built more than 30 years ago, is being rebuilt on the existing site for $34,147,800, the largest project in the city’s history. The City Commission

awarded the construction contract to Marshall Brothers Construction & Engineering in October 2016 with actual construction beginning last January.

The plant currently processes about 2.5 million gallons of raw sewage each day. The new facility will have three new Sequencing Batch Reactors, which are 3.5 million gallon tanks that receive wastewater and treat it before it is released into St. Andrew Bay. This expansion increases the plant’s capacity to accommodate growth on the west side of the city such as the SweetBay housing development at the former airport site.

While residents won’t notice a change in their service, the upgrades are expected to reduce the smell emitted from the facility. For plant operators, however, Utilities Director Chris Lightfoot said the new technology being installed as part of the project will help the city more efficiently manage the plant’s performance day-to-day.

The IntelliPro Monitoring and Control System by Aqua-Aerobic Systems, Inc. will upgrade the plant from a manual facility operated by a city employee to a full-automated system monitored by an operator.

Not only will the personal computer based program manage general operation of the plant such as turning on pumps, generators and valves and adjusting blowers, Intellipro will provide information on the wastewater treatment processes and biological actions.

The new facility will more efficiently treat the wastewater and reduce the number of nutrients released into the bay, which meets Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) regulations and requirements.

Currently, lab techs at an on-site laboratory test and determine what amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, ammonia, and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) are in the wastewater daily. However, test results can take up to two weeks to come back so adjustments made to the treatment process are not always timely. IntelliPro, though, can provide the information in real time so timely adjustments can be made to the treatment process, which will more adequately disinfect the discharge going into the bay.

“It’s a huge benefit to the city and its employees,” said Lightfoot. “To bring the St. Andrews Wastewater Treatment Plant

into the 21st century, to get the processes updated, and to be able to use the technology is a huge benefit to the waste water treatment process.”

Among the other added benefits, Lightfoot said the technology will automatically make changes when sewage levels suddenly get too high to prevent sewer back flows.

The new St. Andrews plant is expected to be complete and fully online in January 2019, bringing the total construction time to two years.

The Millville Wastewater Treatment Plant, located at the end of E. 3rd Street by Watson Bayou, serves the east side of the city. Lightfoot said the plant is partially automated with operators still manually controlling some aspects of the facility. It was upgraded in 1998 and considered state-of-the-art at the time.