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Tiffin officials hear plan to add high‑rate remote filter to handle storm flows at wastewater plant
Summary
City staff presented past upgrades and a plan to add a remote high‑rate cloth‑media treatment unit (AquaStorm/AquaDisc family) to treat storm-driven flows and reduce need for an EQ basin; engineers are at 50% design and city-owned land on Water Street is the proposed site.
City staff gave the Tiffin City Council an update on the Water Pollution Control Center’s recent upgrades and a planned remote high‑rate treatment facility that officials say would treat large storm flows without an equalization (EQ) basin.
The presentation, given by Kevin, a Water Pollution Control Center presenter, laid out the plant’s history, recent capital work and why the city is favoring a cloth‑media high‑rate filter (the presentation identified the vendor family as AquaDisc/AquaStorm). “The plant was initially built in the fifties,” Kevin said, and later described upgrades that increased capacity from 4 million to 13 million gallons and replaced chlorine disinfection with ultraviolet treatment.
The planned remote unit would be an automated cloth‑media, high‑rate treatment system designed to treat up to 24 million gallons per day during storm events, Kevin said. He told council that the city revised its 2015 long‑term control plan to avoid complete separation downtown and instead pursue partial separation plus additional treatment capacity: “We can continue to treat 24,000,000 gallons a day,” Kevin said, explaining the advantage over an EQ basin that can fill and then cease to be effective during multi‑day storms.
Kevin described prior upgrades (2015 and 2021) that added fine‑bubble diffusers, a larger clarifier, UV disinfection, newer blowers and an updated SCADA system that allows remote monitoring. He also explained operational benefits and cost savings: the plant’s electric bills fell from about $16,000 per month before the 2015 project to roughly $7,500 per month after subsequent upgrades.
Council members asked how the system would have performed during the recent heavy rain that pushed the plant to more than 13 million gallons in a day. Kevin said the plant would be required to take up to 13 million gallons through full treatment and that “once that’s hit, then the rest would be diverted to that high rate treatment,” which would keep treating flow continuously while the storm continued.
Engineering is at about 50% design on the remote high‑rate treatment (HRT) unit, Kevin said; the city already purchased a parcel on Water Street the mayor identified as the planned site. Kevin and the mayor said locating the HRT off‑site reduces the cost of a long force main to the plant and thus saves “millions of dollars” compared with the earlier plan that would have relied more heavily on large interceptors and an EQ basin.
Kevin also summarized permit and compliance work: the plant operates under an MPDS permit that sets sampling locations and frequencies, and the city reported no MPDS permit violations in the last year. He noted ongoing constraints on biosolids land application as EPA limits evolve, and he described the city’s current biosolids numbers for 2024: about 4,153,000 gallons pumped to digesters, 1,800,000 gallons hauled to fields (about 362 dry tons) and application to about 104 acres.
The presentation closed with an offer for council and the public to tour the plant; Kevin and the mayor said staff routinely give facility tours and that engineers will return with further design details at future meetings.
Why it matters: the HRT decision shapes how the city manages combined sewer overflows and stormwater during heavy rains, affects multi‑million‑dollar infrastructure choices (pipelines versus remote treatment), and will drive follow‑up engineering, permitting and budget decisions.
