New Regional Facility Enables Present and Future Wastewater Needs

At a Glance

• To accommodate a rapidly growing regional population, Charlotte Water needed to increase the capacity and effectiveness of one of its service area’s wastewater treatment capabilities.
• Hazen partnered with the Garney/Crowder Joint Venture to design a new, state-of-the-art greenfield wastewater treatment plant to achieve Charlotte Water’s capacity, water quality, and sustainability goals.
• Using an innovative densification treatment process, Charlotte Water will be enabled to treat more wastewater using less equipment and fewer resources—resulting in capital and operational cost savings.
• The new facility will benefit the region’s natural ecosystem for years to come, improving water quality in the Catawba River and positioning Charlotte Water to address future water needs.

The population in North Carolina’s northwestern Mecklenburg and eastern Gaston counties has climbed at a brisk pace since 2000. It’s a trend that shows no signs of slowing down, with projections of a 136% population increase from 2014 to 2034. With this boom comes the need to address the likewise growing wastewater treatment needs of the region—a capacity challenge that Charlotte Water has been studying and planning for since the early 2000s.

Charlotte Water turned to Hazen, a long-time trusted partner, to help design a new, state-of-the-art wastewater treatment facility. The goals for this new plant were to accommodate the region’s growing wastewater treatment needs, improve the water quality of the Catawba River, and support the health of the surrounding natural ecosystem. Partnering with the Garney/Crowder Joint Venture, the Hazen team designed the Stowe Regional Water Resource Recovery Facility (WRRF)—a major project that leverages innovative technologies to position Charlotte Water to achieve its wastewater treatment and sustainability goals both immediately and into the future.

Charlotte Water also challenged Hazen to create a solution to streamline flow and solids distribution to the various unit processes in the plant without using any mechanical mixing. This called for a complex modeling and testing process to achieve passive flow distribution with distribution structures that would successfully handle the densified wastewater streams within a wide range of flow levels. With this creative design, Hazen further supported the client’s goals of simpler, more efficient operations with reduced energy requirements while still accommodating present and future wastewater treatment needs.

A Sustainable, Neighborly Mindset

Big picture, there are many ways that the Stowe Regional WRRF will benefit the surrounding environment. The new plant represents a consolidation of two aging wastewater treatment facilities—meaning fewer plant discharges—and will drastically reduce the distance that wastewater needs to be pumped for treatment. The more advanced, effective treatment technologies deployed at the plant will also improve the water quality in the Catawba River, an important water system that runs throughout Charlotte and into South Carolina.

These are all factors that contribute to one of Charlotte Water’s goals for the initiative—that the new plant both accommodates the region’s wastewater treatment needs and facilitates ever-more positive relationships with the environment and the community.

The Hazen team embraced this symbiotic spirit in their use of the guiding principles of the Envision Sustainable Infrastructure Rating System during the planning and design of the new plant.

“We worked very hard during our planning to help Charlotte Water achieve its goal of being a ‘good neighbor’ with this plant,” says Drummey. “We consistently asked ourselves how we could be more sustainable in all its details, from minimizing light pollution to reducing impacts on natural buffers, preserving natural areas, protecting important local flora and fauna, reducing noise and odor, and more.”

Positioned for Future Growth

Another vital factor in the design of the Stowe Regional WRRF is that it provides the capacity to account for future population growth with the potential to expand from treating 15 million gallons of wastewater per day to 25 million gallons per day. But the Hazen team took this future-proofing a step further, designing for potential optimizations by Charlotte Water and evolutions in wastewater treatment requirements.