Well, today was the day if you ponder such things as well!
There is one single water treatment plant for most of Utah County, including Saratoga and Eagle Mountain, and it's in Orem. They process water for about 850,000 people. Most of the water comes from the Provo river, supplemented by Deer Creek Reservoir. They treat 100 million gallons of water PER DAY! There are miles and miles and miles of pipes and canals that carry the water where it needs to be. There are 12 foot tunnels you can drive a car through!
This treatment plant is rated as the most efficient and cleanest treatment plant in the nation! It was extremely clean as we walked around.
This plant uses ozone in the water to kill a lot of the bacteria. They also use a slow flow filter, which the water passes through very slowly. They put some coagulant into the water and the small particles stick to it and coagulate together, and that is then filtered out.
Once a year, they have an "open house" where they show you how they turn pretty clean river water into super clean water we drink.
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| This is the view from the treatment plant. It's up on the bench along the Bonneville Lake Shoreline in Orem |
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| One of the huge buried water holding tanks where the processed water is kept - this is #3 and hold 20 million gallons |
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| Inside the first filtering room |
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| The pumping room |
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| This one of several huge pipes where the water comes in from |
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| The ozone maker machine |
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| Outside filtering tanks |
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| Inside slow flow filtering |
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| This is the "sludge" from the coagulating filtering |
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| Looks like a fish hatchery |
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| Liquid oxygen tank - used to make ozone |
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| This is a huge ice block along the liquid oxygen pipe - the oxygen is only -300+ degrees! (yes, that's negative) |
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| This is the coagulant used during the filtering |
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| The end result - the water is headed for the storage tank |
