The digester and supporting equipment represent about $8 million of that amount. The work is being financed by a $33.5 million loan from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality’s “State Revolving Fund” (SRF), which provides low-interest loans to Michigan communities in order to improve water infrastructure.īecause our WRRF serves Meridian Township and MSU as well as East Lansing, responsibility for loan payback is spread between all three communities. This represents the third phase of an ongoing renovation to the WRRF, which was necessary to add treatment capacity as well as upgrades to worn equipment. When the new system comes online, the solids will be pumped into a silo-like tower where anerobic bacteria will get to work, digesting the solids and releasing methane gas which will be stored in a tank on the WRRF site.Ī gas-powered generator called a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) unit will burn the methane, providing heat to keep the digester working efficiently and providing electricity to supplement the electric needs of the plant.Īfter the bacteria has done its work, the resulting sludge will continue to the dewatering process and the quantity of “solids” destined for landfill will be considerably less than the current quantity.īetween the savings in landfill costs and the reduction in electric costs, Scheuerman estimates that the digester will result in savings of about $500,000 per year. The other end product is “biosolids,” which are currently “dewatered” in the plant and then dumped into a semi-trailer sized dumpster to be hauled off to a landfill.

One end product is clean water, which is released into the Red Cedar River after going through a final disinfection process by being pumped through an array of ultraviolet lightbulbs.

In an interview with ELi, Bob Scheuerman from the City of East Lansing’s Engineering Department explained that there are two end products of the wastewater treatment system. A new environmentally friendly “digester” is being added to the section of the plant which handles “biosolids,” the industry term for anything that goes into a drain or sewer that isn’t water. There’s a big upgrade in the works for East Lansing’s Water Resource Recovery Facility (WRRF), the plant that treats wastewater for East Lansing, Meridian Township and Michigan State University.

Meridian township water analysis