Nashville’s historic Omohundro Water Treatment Plant has continuously supplied drinking water to the city since 1929. The original planning study for the plant indicated a need for increased treatment capacity to facilitate higher quality water output and improve efficiency. Under contract with Nashville Metro Water Services (MWS), Gresham Smith provided full-service planning, design and construction-phase services for the necessary improvements and retrofits to the plant, which were executed with minimal disruption to daily water production.
40%
increase in treatment capacity
15%
reduction in O&M costs
90mgd
rated capacity
A Three-Phase Approach
From settling tanks, flash mixers and flocculators to rectangular clarifiers and dual media filters, Omohundro’s processes are typical of a surface water treatment plant. To effectively tackle the comprehensive project, we separated the upgrades into three distinct phases:- Phase I – an upgrade to improve overall finished water quality.
- Phase II – included improvements to increase the rated capacity of the treatment plant from 50 mgd to 90 mgd.
- Phase III – converted the facility from a manual mode of operation to a fully automated treatment plant. The automation reduced the annual O&M costs by approximately 15 percent while increasing the treatment capacity by 40 percent.