Innovation helps Fremont WWTP secure industrial & economic growth

Facing rapid industrial growth and aging infrastructure, the City of Fremont, Nebraska, launched a multi-phase expansion of its Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) to meet increasing demand and prepare for future development.

Scott Seelhoff, wastewater superintendent for the City of Fremont, Nebraska, said the city has strong relationships with its industrial dischargers. To enhance those relationships and build new ones, he said this project became vital to the city.

"This project was essential in allowing new industrial facilities to be constructed and existing facilities to be expanded, sparking new and enhancing long term relationships with the industrial partners," he said. "In addition the new treatment facilities, specifically the anaerobic lagoons, provided industrial flow and loading equalization. This equalization allowed the processing facilities to be flexible in their operations on a 5-day workweek, minimizing affects on the treatment process."

Originally built in 1964, the facility underwent four major improvement packages in less than a decade to handle surging flows and loads driven by regional food processing investments. HDR led the design and engineering for each phase, beginning with upgrades to secondary treatment systems to address ammonia, suspended solids and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD). Subsequent projects added three covered anaerobic lagoons for industrial pretreatment, a second egg-shaped anaerobic digester (ESAD) and a state-of-the-art biogas conditioning system that refines methane to pipeline-quality renewable natural gas.

"Working with new technology was one of the biggest engineering hurdles related to specifying and designing a system that can clean biogas to natural gas quality," said Eric Berggren, Senior Vice President, HDR, Omaha, Nebraska. "Integrating this technology into an existing wastewater treatment facility was challenging and required input from the systems providers and the City of Fremont."

The City now receives revenue for both the gas and renewable energy credits, turning waste into a financial and environmental asset.

"Throughout the four distinct phases, the City of Fremont wastewater operations and maintenance staff needed to maintain continuous operation of the facilities which required careful coordination between the city, contractors and engineering team," Seelhoff said. "The staff did an excellent job, producing outstanding treated water quality throughout the entire process."