Keeping the Water Flowing for Five Decades

The simple task of turning on a water faucet and filling up a glass is so ubiquitous one might forget the vast amount of work involved in getting it to the sink.

For city of Glasgow residents, their tap water is sourced from the Missouri River. The raw untreated water travels via pipeline several miles northwest to the Glasgow Water Treatment plant, in operation since 1969.

David George, Water Foreman, has been working at the plant since December 1972, and is an expert on making a perfect cup of H2O for home use.

Currently, the plant is in daily operation from about 8 a.m. to about 9 p.m. and pumps out about 1.3 to 1.8 million gallons of potable water for use by residents. The water enters the pipe grid directly, with some diverted to two city reservoirs, together capable of storing 2.5 million gallons.

Last year, the plant underwent extensive renovations, the first since 1989. The plant is now computer operated, with personnel able to track operations remotely. This was not the case before, as the plant was entirely analog, George said.

The renovations happened during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which proved to be challenging. Another challenge was getting custom made fittings from India. That process was delayed by typhoons, George said.

FROM GROUND TO SURFACE WATER

"We went through quite a bit of change here," George said. "We went through three different plants" in the same space.

"This was a ground water treatment plant, originally. Then, we had to prove -- with renovations for surface water in 1989 -- that it could be treated with our polymers. We had to go through numerous chemical changes trying to make it work."

The polymers are negatively or positively charge to promote algae and other sediments to clump together into masses large enough to be cause by filters, George explained.

To get the chemistry just right, Bob Thompson, an expert in the field of jar sampling, set up a portable laboratory at the pump site on the Missouri River, tinkering with the recipe until it was perfected.

"He did three seasons," George said. "He didn't do winter months. But, he optimized what he thought would be the best treatment for that surface water. We took it from there and went with his recommendation of polymers."

That original recipe is very similar to the polymer in use today, George said.

Ironically, the water taken from the Missouri River is very clean to begin with, making it more difficult to clean than dirtier water, George said.

"There is very little turbidity. You are better off having a little more dirt in water to clean it better. If you are doing a jar sample for the kids, they don't see very much reaction. But if I throw a little dirt in there, it works a lot better."

The dam, in place for many decades, has caused the water to settle, meaning less sedimentation.

"There is a large settling basin," George said. "They put it through the tunnels and we are taking it a mile or two downstream. It is pretty clean."

Using surface water means more water is available for the plant, George said.

"We had five wells and were struggling with an aquifer going down. We had numerous people who were tapped into it to water their crops. As we used water in the hot summer, we had to watch the levels of our wells. I checked that every morning to see what we were losing. The wells were about 120 feet deep. They hit the gravel main at that point. There might have been 12 feet of gravel, which was the holding basin."

The groundwater also was more corrosive, forcing mandatory and costly refits.

"Every five years we used to have to pull the wells and make sure they weren't corroding, renovate the shafts and put them all back together," George said.

With the use of surface water, starting in 1989, that issue is not as prevalent.

Editor's Note: This is the first in a limited series about infrastructure serving Valley County. Check out the article about the sewage treatment plant in a future edition of The Courier.