Water Treatment Plant Lead Operator Chad Flannagan has been busy with his construction skills. Chad recently built a portable demo that is a cross sectional visualization of our water treatment process. 

"I got the idea by giving plant tours and getting the same questions each time," he said. "It's a simplified model to demonstrate on a smaller scale what we do here, and we're able to take it out into the community to provide educational demonstrations."

Using raw water directly from the Tar River, the same process can be utilized in the demo to show how the water is cleaned and disinfected. The water treatment process includes coagulation and flocculation of the suspended solids (which makes them come together for easier removal), settling of the solids, filtering of the settled water to get rid of any particles not yet removed, disinfection of the finished water, backwash of a filter to remove particles, and testing for disinfection residual and turbidity to ensure a safe product. The demo also contains jars of raw river water next to the filtered drinking water for comparison.

"The public has absolutely loved this new display," said Chad. "It keeps people engaged and it allows us to actually demonstrate the treatment process from flocculation and sedimentation all the way through filtration and disinfection."