Waste Water Treatment Facility

General Information
Mountain House has a dedicated waste water treatment facility which is located just northeast of Byron Highway & Mountain House Parkway. The facility is owned by the MHCSD and operated by Echo Resources.

Google Hybrid Map


 * Ribbon Cutting 10-9-07

Lift Station
Prior to leaving the sewage system, this air filter draw off the gases from the main line:



The sewage system terminates at a basin 8' feet deep. Beneath the deck are chambers 20' deep that hold the raw sewage.



There are several chambers below the basin.

As water passes from chamber to chamber, it must pass though an auger that removes and large pieces of material that survive the turbulent journey from the homes.



The Last chamber hold the pumps that send the water on to the water treatment facility.

Once the water rises high enough in the chamber, float switches trigger the pumps.



The lift station is a permanent part of the plant and will serve all three phases.

Phase I
Mountain House was started with a temporary waste water facility designed to accommodate the first 3000 homes. It has a capacity of 460,000 gallons per day.

The foot print for this plant takes up about 30 acres

The raw sewage is pumped into these holding ponds where it's agitated and oxygenated to promote bacteria that will help break down the solids.

This shot is stitched together to show a 180 degree view of the first two ponds. There's a larger third pond that's used to store the treated water.



It's then moved though various stations to treat the water.

This station injects air into the effluent.



This is a giant sand filter.



Chemical treatment station.





This infrastructure will be decommissioned once Phase II is complete.

Phase II
Phase 2 should go live before the end of 2007. The plant is operational now, but still requires a bit of tuning to get the discharge up to state standards. Once fully operational, it will have a capacity of 3 million gallons per day.

Phase 2 should accommodate the needs of Mountain House residents and businesses up until about 75% build out.

The new plant has a much smaller foot print than the previous plant. The entire plant now resides on less then 2 acres.

Picture of the building. Pipes entering center of building comes from lift station.



The effluent enters the building and is first put into the large vortex chamber.

The liquid is spun by the force of the water coming in, and solids gravitate to the center where they are removed.



The liquid is then dumped into one of several enormous batch processing tanks under the building where it is subject to various biological processes that help break down the sewage. This is where the bulk of the heavy lifting is done. Computers control monitoring of the process that convert the sewage to water. This process generates gases that are filtered off below:



These enormous air compressors add air where needed to help the bacteria.



The end water is nearly pure, but there are some solids that need to be dealt with. The sludge is pumped upstairs to this room. The large green cylinder is a centerfuge that removes most of the remaining liquid. it's than dumped in a truck that sells the material to farms for fertilizer.



Phase III
Phase 3 will require building a facility similar to the structure for Phase 2 that will add another 2.4 Million gallons per day of capacity.

Infrastructure
At its deepest point along 205, the sewage system lies 35 feet underground. The system is entirely gravity fed. At the lift station, the 3' pipe is only 15' under ground. This is because Mountain House slowly looses elevation going towards the plant.

Press

 * Mountain House plant may offer sewage alternative Ledger Dispatch, November 25
 * Lighter Treatment October 9 2007