Project: Hospital
Location: California
Size: 280 m3/d (75,000 gpd)
Contract: Design-Supply

Key objectives: enhanced nitrogen reduction; odorless and noiseless; package plant; remote supervision capability

Plans to expand the Hi-Desert Medical Centre in Joshua Tree, California, also meant that a new onsite packaged wastewater treatment plant would be required to service the increased flows.

The owner required a treatment system that would provide high quality effluent meeting the state requirement for Total Nitrogen of less than 10 mg/L, as well as BOD/TSS less than 15 mg/L. Additionally, as the facility is in close proximity to both the medical center and a local sheriff’s office, the technology needed to be odorless and quiet.

The USBF® wastewater treatment technology was selected to meet these design objectives. Influent flows from the headworks to a flow splitter box where it is equally divided into two USBF® bioreactors in parallel operation. The effluent gravity flows from the package plants and is discharged into the ground via existing seepage pits. The facility features a SCADA control system for remote supervision.

The plant was successfully started-up and passed a 7-day performance test in late 2013.