Due to the waste from the Northeast Correctional Facility, Alliance Water Resources—the wastewater treatment plant in Bowling Green, Mo.—constantly was having problems. The prison, which produces 300,000 gal of water per day, was creating a deluge of problems for the pump station, including clogged and plugged pumps, excessive power draw, the need for continuous service and ultimately pump replacement. The inmates were flushing paper, jumpsuits and all manner of debris—pretty much anything they could flush.
It was costing the plant downtime and a lot of money. When the pumps started needing total replacements on a very frequent basis, costing the plant more than $30,000 each year, the utility knew it needed a solution.
“We knew we had to find something better,” said Bo Stinnett of Alliance Water Resources. “It was beyond expensive to maintain and very difficult to stay on top of the almost-constant plugging.”
Because the pit was 35 ft deep, there were not many options.
“The Franklin Miller Spiralift SLV was the only machine that had the technology to take care of the needs we had in the space we had,” Stinnett said. “Because we have another Spiralift in our plant that we’ve been running for years, we were confident in buying another Franklin Miller unit.”
The Spiralift SLV was installed, and the results were immediate: no more clogs, no more downtime, and no more wasted manpower or replacing machines.
“We check on it once in a while,” Stinnett said. “But that’s it. It’s working great and has proven to be very, very low maintenance. It has worked wonderfully for us.”
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The Spiralift SLV is a fine screen that conveys solids straight up. With its small footprint, it fits into tight places. This unit combines Taskmaster grinding technology with a vertical screw screen to provide fine screenings of solids entrained in liquid flows.
