No one will ever again be able to say Oxford Township’s water is ‘raw and untreated? as a former village councilman once described it.
Last week, the township’s second water treatment plant, located along Dunlap Road near Seymour Lake Road, went into operation.
‘The water quality’s going to be a lot better,? said David Brown, pump maintenance supervisor with the Oakland County Drain Commissioner’s Office.
It cost approximately $3.5 million to build and equip the second treatment plant, run a water line to it from the Mickelson Shores well site and put four new wells on Dunlap Road into operation, according to Glenn R. Appel, assistant chief engineer with the Oakland County Drain Commissioner’s Office.
‘It has the capacity to produce 2,600 gallons (of treated water) a minute,? said Project Manager Doug Scott, of the engineering firm Rowe, Inc.
With its four massive filter vessels, each designed to hold 18,000 gallons of water, the 5,000-square-foot plant removes both arsenic and iron from the groundwater being pumped out of four new wells on Dunlap Road and two older wells at Mickelson Shores.
‘We can run four wells at a time through (the plant), but there are six available,? Brown said.
This is the township’s second water treatment plant. The first one, located in the Oxford Woods subdivision, was up and running in May 2006, cost $1.6 million to build and treats about 2,000 gallons per minute.
Both plants were constructed by the Oxford-based Trojan Development, which, according to Appel, did ‘an excellent job.?
With both treatment plants now in operation, the township will finally be able comply with federal regulations that lowered the amount of arsenic allowed in municipal water supplies from 50 to 10 parts per billion (ppb) as of January 2006.
‘We will be under (10 ppb),? Brown said.
Prior to the treatment plants, the township’s water system was well below the old 50 ppb standard with arsenic level ranging from 17 to 21 ppb.
As for the treated water’s iron content, there will only be a ‘trace amount,? Scott said. ‘The water leaving this plant will have virtually no iron in it.
‘We’ll have the iron down to around 0.03 parts per million,? said Brown, noting zero iron is the goal and ‘most of the time? that goal will be achieved.
But don’t look for that rusty, orange-colored water to completely disappear overnight.
Although the water leaving the plant is virtually iron-free, it must still travel through the old water mains and storage tower where it will continue to pick up iron residue.
‘There’s iron built up in the pipes now,? Scott said.
It’s going to take an estimated two to three years before all the residual iron is completely flushed out of the system by the treated water making the orange water complaints a thing of the past.
‘It’s slowly going to get better and better,? assured township Supervisor Bill Dunn.