Oxford Water Treatment Plant Design-Build

The Oxford Water Treatment Plant (Design-Build) project involved:

• The design and construction of a new water treatment plant, interconnecting piping between the Oxford WTP and Reservoir Pumping Station site and the Merklin Reservoir and Pumping Station site,
• Interconnecting piping between well #4 and the Oxford site
• Integration and control strategy for interfacing the existing wells with the new water treatment plant
• Related infrastructure and appurtenances to treat the City of White Rock’s source water to remove arsenic and manganese using ozone treatment and a two stage filtration system to meet performance specifications

White Rock’s groundwater is of high quality with manganese (and sometimes iron) being the issues of concern along with arsenic levels just at or above the Health Canada MAC. Therefore, the use of advanced and capital cost-intensive treatment technologies were not generally warranted. Whereas biofiltration or membrane technologies must often be considered in groundwaters where there is concurrent high TDS, ammonia, organics, iron, manganese and/or arsenic, the use of conventional greensand and arsenic polishing technologies was more appropriate for groundwater sources like White Rock’s. 

It was from this perspective that the NAC design-build team chose filtration using GreenSand Plus media for manganese reduction and the AdEdge E33 adsorption media for arsenic polishing to achieve the low target levels required by the City. The use of steel pressure vessels for the key unit processes was not only appropriate for long-term durability, but also allowed for future changes in filter and/or adsorption media design should improvements become available.

The new water treatment plant has a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) for operation, control and data acquisition for the water treatment processes. The existing SCADA was integrated into the water treatment plant system to have a central operation and control at the water treatment plant Control Room.