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How the City of Pueblo’s Ntensify Nutrient Removal System Is Saving Money on Chemicals and Energy
The Historic Arkansas Riverwalk in downtown Pueblo, Colorado.
T
he City of Pueblo, Colorado, recently undertook a renovation of its James R. DiIorio Wastewater Reclamation Facility, installing an Ntensify nutrient removal system that has made its treatment process significantly more efficient and has reduced chemical and energy expenses so much that the improvement will pay for itself within 2 years. In this interview, Pueblo’s director of wastewater, Nancy Keller, tells Municipal Water Leader about the benefits of the Ntensify system and about the Pueblo Wastewater Department’s other top issues.
capacity of 19 million gallons a day (MGD) and is currently operating at about 11 MGD. Municipal Water Leader: What was the motivation behind the recent renovation of the DiIorio plant?
Municipal Water Leader: Would you give us an overview of the City of Pueblo’s wastewater services?
Municipal Water Leader: Were there issues with the plant related to aging infrastructure?
Nancy Keller: The James R. DiIorio Water Reclamation Facility is the city’s only wastewater facility. It serves the 110,000 people of Pueblo as well as a few thousand people outside the city boundaries. The plant has a design
Nancy Keller: Aging is an issue. The plant is about 30 years old, and portions of it have changed over the years. When we began removing ammonia, we knew that we would also have to remove other nutrients down the road, so we took
Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position with the City of Pueblo.
28 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | February 2021
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PHOTO COURTESY OF DAVID SHANKBONE.
Nancy Keller: I am a medical technologist who moved from a hospital lab to managing a commercial lab and then to managing the city’s wastewater lab for 22 years. More and more regulatory issues of the sort I assisted with were coming up, and eventually my position was split into two jobs. I moved into a regulatory compliance position, which I held for 8 years, and then became the city’s wastewater director in 2016.
Nancy Keller: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is requiring states to address nutrient loading to prevent the eutrophication of rivers. The EPA has worked with Colorado and many other states to develop standards for nitrogen and phosphorus. In Colorado, those standards are being implemented in two phases. The Regulation 85 requirements that are in place right now set a level that needs to be reached immediately. There will be a second level with lower standards that will be adopted in 2027. The requirements of the first phase were put into our permit with a compliance schedule that required us to meet the standards by April 2021. The construction that would have been necessary to add the nutrient removal processes would have cost $25–$30 million, so we took an alternate approach that was significantly less expensive.
