Designed for Future Growth, Safety and Efficiency

The City of Blair’s Water Treatment Plant treats water from the Missouri River. With large-scale industrial growth and steady residential expansion over the past 25 years, the City has expanded the plant from 20 million gallons per day (MGD) to its current capacity of 27 MGD. More than 75% of the plant’s capacity supports the food giant Cargill’s 650-acre bioscience complex — the company’s largest global investment — located less than a mile away. 

To support the growing demands, HDR collaborated with the City to determine the most economical expansion of the treatment plant to meet current and future treatment needs. We evaluated multiple expansion alternatives before choosing the desired Phase V, which added a stand-alone, 7 MGD parallel treatment train. Using a holistic approach, the project expands nearly every aspect of the treatment process: presedimentation, softening, recarbonation, filtering, clearwells, chemicals, and transmission. The new treatment train interconnects to the existing trains at the filter piping to accommodate the use of the existing high-service pumps. In a separate project, a new 24-inch industrial transmission main will double the pipeline capacity to Cargill’s campus. 

During construction, the City requested that additional improvements be made to the water plant expansion to provide greater redundancy in the water plant operations. These included extending the industrial high-service pump discharge line, adding a new air compressor and an additional new polymer feed system, and connecting an emergency residuals overflow pipe to the equalization basin.  

The project accommodates anticipated future expansions, facilitates regional economic growth, and improves safety, operational flexibility and energy efficiency. With limited space at the current plant, the team located new facilities adjacent to the Missouri River, matched the new structures to the existing ones, and maintained plant operations throughout construction. Perhaps most importantly, the expansion allows the city to thrive for decades to come.