Upgraded with an extended aeration (EA) aerotor plant from US engineering and manufacturing company Lakeside Equipment Corporation, a water and wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) has won the Top Project award in the water and wastewater category of the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) Arkansas Engineering Excellence Awards.
Designed by independent consulting engineer Mike Marlar to blend in with the local landscape, the Lakeside EA Aerotor Plant at Bull Shoals incorporates the components of a large-scale, extended aeration/ complete mix process in conjunction with final clarification.
Lakeside’s agent in Arkansas city North Little Rock, US — Shupe & Associates — worked with Marlar and the treatment plant team throughout the upgrade. It was vital to deactivate the old plant and get the new one online within a deadline with high quality, treated effluent.
The seeding process proved successful, with clear treated water within 24 hours. The old plant, designed for 20 years — but still running after 40 — had begun to rust, but had always given quality effluent.
In an area that attracts visitors for the fishing of White River trout, the new plant does not make noise, and the new lighting provides a safe work area, without being intrusive to the local environment.
According to The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, Bull Shoals’ fishery is worth US$705m annually.
With other visitor-spending factors such as food, lodging and transportation, that figure rises to US$1.5bn each year for Arkansas. The largest lake in The Natural State, with 45,440 acres of water and a 1,000-mile shoreline, Bull Shoals Lake stretches along Arkansas’s northern border and into southern Missouri.
