Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
A Sentry Crane employee signals for the truck driver to halt the flow of concrete while pouring the floor of the water plant addition.
A view from just outside the door of the new water plant addition. A 10-acre area has been cleared and prepped for lagoon construction.
Once the concrete is poured, the workers use a squeegee to level it off and smooth it out.
Progress at the water plant has been evident the past couple of weeks, with concrete mixer trucks, scrapers, diggers and other equipment on site.
The floor of the new water plant addition was poured on May 12 and 14. Sentry Crane brought in concrete from Heartland Ready Mix of Carrington to first pour the pad for the reverse osmosis equipment on Wednesday, May 12. They then returned the morning of Friday, May 14 to pour the surrounding floor. Installation of the roof on the new addition was completed this past Tuesday.
Dirt work for the lagoon is also in progress. The topsoil was removed earlier this month, and last week crews began hauling in dirt to form the berm, or dike, of the lagoon. Once the new system is online, water rejected during the reverse osmosis filtration process will collect in an evaporation pond, which is a man-made pond with a very large surface area that is designed to evaporate the water by sunlight. Due to dry conditions, the subcontractor needed to mobilize a water truck, wetting down the ground to help the dry material bind together. Lagoon construction is set to wrap up by mid-June.
Wigens Water Technologies, the manufacturer of the reverse osmosis system, recently submitted its final design for approval. The company has said that production will take 16 weeks, and estimated delivery will be in the beginning of August. Water treatment will be done on temporary equipment for about six weeks in September and October, at which time the current lime treatment system will be fully removed to make way for the new reverse osmosis system. Officials expect to have the new reverse osmosis system fully online by the end of the year.
