Planning for Higher Standards

Completed in August of 2001, MWY’s Amendment to the City of Fayetteville’s Facility Plan calls for the construction of a new wastewater treatment plant and contains specific recommendations to meet the most stringent environmental standards of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.

Our recommendations for the design of the West Side wastewater treatment facility – proposed to discharge into a tributary stream in the Illinois River Watershed – were influenced by both environmental and aesthetic concerns.

First, we have recommended a biological nutrient removal treatment process to remove biological oxygen demand (BOD), total suspended solids (TSS), ammonia, nitrogen and phosphorous to very low levels. Second, because the facility will be located near a residential area, the city has requested an aesthetically pleasing low-profile facility with a complete odor-control system. Our plans also call for the creation of additional, equivalent wetlands to replace the wetlands permanently altered during construction.

In addition to designing individual unit processes to minimize the creation of odors, we have recommended an odor-control system consisting of bio-scrubbers and bio-filters.

Meeting Stringent Effluent Standards

Prior to completion of construction of facilities in 1984, the Bentonville wastewater treatment plant's original Facility Plan was complete by MWY under Construction Grants Program. In 1993, a second Facility Plan was developed for upgrading the original facility. This $9 million project included:

• New laboratory space
• A new maintenance facility
• An effluent reuse pumping facility
• Twelve miles of 12 to 24-inch gravity sewers
• Four million gallons of in-system flow-equalization
• A 7 MGD lift station

In 1999, a third Facility Plan was completed to address new limitations on effluent ammonia. The $3.5 million in improvments, completed in 2002, included:

• Anoxic basins for nitrate removal
• Additional aerobic digesters
• New blower building
• Improvements to the SCADA system