Project Roundup: Challenging Site Prompts Novel Design for the City of Rufus

by Margaret McGladrey, Marketing Coordinator

Overview

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality believed the 27-year-old wastewater treatment plant serving the City of Rufus, Oregon, might have been contaminating groundwater with nitrogen from the system’s sewage disposal trenches and treatment lagoons. While the City could have selected several straightforward alternatives to bring the facility back into DEQ compliance, the City wanted an environmentally friendly solution that required little maintenance and preserved the City’s adjacent property for development into an industrial park. The City teamed with the engineers of AP to develop an innovative, energy-efficient solution to reuse the treated wastewater to irrigate crops and landscaping.

The Challenges

• Meeting the City’s goal to use treated wastewater to enhance the environment while maintaining the safety of the City’s bordering industrial park property.
• Optimizing land available for the disposal site to accommodate the planned industrial park.
• Eliminating disposal trenches in favor of reclaiming treated wastewater for beneficial uses.

The Benefits

• Maximizing use of the 5.4-acre disposal site by irrigating underground through 165,000 lineal feet (31 miles) of drip line to maintain the industrial development area.
• Minimizing potential human and animal contact with reclaimed water.
• Protecting the system against vandalism and mechanical damage, as drip line is underground.
• Promoting natural removal of nitrates by plant material by uniformly dispersing water into the crop’s root zone at agronomic rates.
• Eliminating aerosols and the need for gas chlorination, creating a safer working environment for the plant operator.

ACEC Award 

The City of Rufus and AP were honored to receive a Grand Award from the 2009 American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) of Oregon Engineering Excellence award program for the project at a ceremony in Portland on January 14. Engineering Excellence is an annual design competition that recognizes engineering achievements demonstrating the highest degree of merit and ingenuity. One of the judges who evaluated projects and bestowed awards for the competition commented that the Rufus project provides “an excellent example of how, with gentle guidance, an engineering firm can help a small community to ‘think big.’”