The purpose of the treatment plant is to produce safe and pleasant drinking water. There are two very important aspects to the treatment process: (1) organic material or particulate removal and (2) disinfection. Through innovative design engineering, the treatment plant is simple and fully automated. Because of the sophisticated automation, the treatment plant is able to continuously monitor and control the treatment process and provide the necessary alarms to alert staff when operational parameters are exceeded. This automation allows for reduced staffing requirements compared to other similar treatment plants, which translates into lower costs to the member agencies.

For organic material removal, special chemicals are added to the raw water for the coagulation & flocculation process. In this step, a physical/chemical interaction occurs whereby the organic material “clumps” to the coagulant chemical to the extent that its density increases allowing it to settle out in the subsequent sedimentation process. Visually, in the flocculation step, the small clumps can be observed suspended in the treated water. During the sedimentation step, the flow of the treated water is slowed to avoid any turbulence in the water that might disrupt the flocculated material and to allow for this suspended material to settle to the bottom of the sedimentation basin.

Whatever flocculated particulates that might have escaped the sedimentation process will be captured by the filtration process in the next step whereby the treated water passes through a bed of gravel, sand, and anthracite coal. The finer sand and anthracite coal material will remove the remaining particulates.
In one of the final steps of the treatment process, disinfection occurs. In this step chlorine is injected into the treated water stream prior to its storage into the two clearwells (reservoirs). The storage reservoirs serve an important role in the primary disinfection process where the time it takes the water to circulate through these reservoirs, the required contact time (the time necessary for the disinfectant to do its job) is met or exceeded.

Prior to distribution of the treated water to the member agencies, this disinfected water undergoes a secondary disinfection process in which aqua ammonia (aqueous ammonia) is added in a specific ratio to chlorine to promote the formation of chloramine. The advantage of chloramine is the reduction of the potential formation of disinfection byproducts (THMs) compared to using a higher concentration of chlorine should chloramine not be used.