Caption
The old facility at the Big Creek Water Reclamation Plant used sand to help clean wastewater, but now they've upgraded to using membranes.
Credit: Amanda Andrews / GPB News
Section Branding
Header Content
Fulton County’s largest water treatment plant unveils upgraded systems, new facilities
Hero Image
Primary Content
LISTEN: Fulton County’s largest water treatment plant will officially reopen Thursday with new and upgraded facilities. GPB’s Amanda Andrews explains what’s changed.
Fulton County's Big Creek Water Reclamation Facility unveiled upgrades to the plant and treatment systems ahead of an eventual ribbon-cutting ceremony. The changes to the facility, located in Roswell, north of Atlanta, include expanded water treatment to increase capacity from 24 million to 32 million gallons of wastewater per day.
David Clark is the director of Fulton County Public Works. He said they’ve converted the facility from a conventional treatment plant to a state-of-the-art membrane plant.
“It's much cleaner with a membrane plant.” Clark said “It removes much more of the nutrients from the wastewater. And therefore, it's much cleaner water that's in the Chattahoochee River.”
It takes about 18 hours for a drop of water to enter the facility, be cleaned, and then sent back to the Chattahoochee River. The membrane tanks are one of the very last steps the water goes through to be cleaned after a series of filters, screens, and good bacteria remove the waste.
Clark said the membrane is a porous sheet with small nanometer openings.
“Basically, the water molecules are the ones that go through the membranes and leave all of the other stuff back in the tanks,” he said. “Then we take that water, provide some UV protection, and then discharge it to the river.”
The new facility was designed to treat 38 million gallons of wastewater a day in case an expansion is required in the future. Officials expect the plant won’t need to be expanded until after 2050.
The City of Roswell is developing a trail on the new greenspace at the edge of the Big Creek facility which will connect with a riverwalk along the Chattahoochee.
Clark said this new project strongly considered the impact of the treatment plant on the community.
“Obviously, the neighborhood under this older model was subject to odor, noise and light issues that we've tried to address with how we laid out the new facility and address several things,” he said.
The plant will serve several northern metro Atlanta communities including John’s Creek, Roswell and Alpharetta. Similar upgrades are planned for the Camp Creek facility located in southwestern Atlanta starting in 2030.
Correction
An earlier version of this story read:
Fulton County's Big Creek Water Reclamation Facility unveiled upgrades to the plant and treatment systems ahead of a ribbon-cutting ceremony this week.
The ceremony was canceled and a rescheduled time is pending.
Secondary Content
Author
Bottom Content
