The treatment process

Much of our water comes to us from the Sacramento River.

Transforming that silty blend into clean drinking water is quite a
process.
The first thing we do is remove the solid particles in the water -- mostly
silt mixed in during the water's long journey from the Sierra-Nevada
mountains to one of our three drinking water treatment plants:
Rinconada, Santa Teresa or Penitencia.
Each of the three drinking water treatment plants has its own design.
To illustrate how the treatment
process works, below is a
description of the process at the
Rinconada plant:
Removing solids
At our Rinconada Water
Treatment Plant, we remove the
suspended solids in large tanks
called clarifiers, the largest
feature at the plant. Each tank is
approximately 20 feet deep and Clarifiers at Rinconada Water Treatment
117 feet square. Plant
We add special chemicals--such
as aluminum sulfate--to the
water that enters the clarifier. These chemicals, called coagulants,
cause the solid particles to clump together. This process is called
flocculation.
Eventually, the clumps form a "sludge blanket." The solid clumps are
far heavier than the water, so the blanket sinks to the bottom. As it
does, the blanket works like a finely-meshed net to catch other smaller
particles.
The water at the top of the tank, now free of solids, overflows to the
gutter-like spokes you see radiating from the center of the tanks in the
picture above.
Rakes slowly rotate along the bottom of the clarifier. They scrape the
settled sludge at the bottom of the tank into the center where it is
removed periodically through pipes that run under the clarifiers.
Ozone disinfection
Starting in the spring of 2006, new ozone systems will be in place at
Penitencia and Santa Teresa water treatment plants. Ozone is a
powerful disinfectant, minimizes harmful disinfection byproducts and
removes unpleasant odors and tastes.

The first step in ozone disinfection is to generate ozone gas. Liquid

oxygen is transported to the plant and stored for use. It is then
vaporized into oxygen gas. When electric currents are applied to a flow
of oxygen gas, some oxygen molecules (O2) are split and bond to
other oxygen molecules to form ozone molecules (O3).

Next, water that has finished the Ozone generation

flocculation process is piped into
the ozone contactor basins. Ozone is bubbled up through the water.
Water typically will spend 15 minutes in this system, traveling up and
down a series of columns to maximize the contact with the ozone gas.

The newly ozone treated water then moves on through the pipes to the
next step, filtration.
Meanwhile, the ozone that was used in the process is converted back
into harmless oxygen and released into the atmosphere.
Filtration
Next, the water is filtered to
remove microscopic particles.
Rinconada has six filters each
capable of filtering 16.7 million
gallons of water per day. Each
filtration tank is 13 feet deep and
77 feet long, about half the length
of an Olympic-sized swimming
pool.
At the bottom of each filter are
layers of coarse sand (6 inches),

Filtration basins
fine sand (18 inches), and anthracite goal (1 foot). As the water seeps
down the layers of sand and coal, tiny particles as small as one micron
are left behind.
Each of our plants will use granular activated carbon, or GAC, in the
future instead of anthracite coal. GAC, the same type of material used
in many home filtration systems, removes tiny particles and also
chemical compounds that affect the water’s taste and odor.
Just like any home water filtration system, these filters get dirty and
must be maintained. To keep them functional, they have to be washed
periodically. The process, called "backwashing," involves several steps.
First, the filter is taken off line and the water is drained down to the
filter bed. Then, the air wash cycle is started which pushes air up
through the filter bed causing the filter bed to appear to boil. This
breaks up the compacted filter bed and forces the accumulated
particles into suspension. The air wash cycle lasts for about three
minutes.
After the air wash cycle stops,
the backwash cycle starts with
water flowing up through the
filter bed. Most of the
accumulated particles are
flushed out. This cycle continues
until the backwash water looks
clean. The filter is then refilled
with water and put back on-line.
The backwash water flows into
Backwash cycle the recovery ponds where the
solids in the washwater settle out
and the water is pumped back to the beginning of the process to be
treated again.

At the Santa Teresa plant (starting in the spring 2006), the waste
backwash water enters a mini-treatment plant to pre-clean it before it
is pumped back to the starting point again. This will further reduce the
possibility of parasites like giardia and cryptosporidium cycling back to
the main treatment process. The other two plants may have this
capability in the future.
Final disinfection
The filtered water goes through one last step, secondary disinfection,
to provide continuous disinfection when it is delivered to water users.
Our treatment plants use chlorine and chloramine to kill any bacteria
or viruses that may be present in the pipes from our plant to your tap.
Chloramine is a combined chlorine and ammonia compound used to
disinfect potable water. (See the Chloramine Fact Sheet PDF 119 KB)
Chlorine was first successfully used as a disinfectant for water in 1908.
Chlorine disinfection has just about wiped out water-borne diseases
such as cholera and typhoid in the United States. The science of water
treatment has progressed so far that detection and control of
contaminants in water have reduced health hazards to nearly zero.
After the water is treated, it flows through the pipelines all across the
Santa Clara Valley. Your water retailer takes it from here and
distributes the water to homes and businesses.

Holding ponds where mud settles

The mud press: solids waste stream
Mud from the bottom of the clarifiers flows into the holding ponds
where it settles and thickens to approximately 4 to 5 percent of solids
in the water.
The mud is then pumped into a mixing tank where anionic polymer is
added to cause it to coagulate or separate from the water as it is
pumped onto the belt press.

Mud pumped onto a belt press

The mud is spread out on the top belt and channeled back and forth by
plastic blades to allow most of the water to drain through the belts
(meshed nets). The mud is then dropped onto the lower belt and
sandwiched between the upper belt as it moves through a series of
rollers, which squeezes out even more water.

The belt press process

The mud cake is scraped off the belt and drops onto a conveyor and
deposited in an outside holding area where it is periodically hauled off
to a landfill.

Mud cake ready to be hauled to a landfill