A Large Recharge

Peoria Builds Big with Butler Reclamation Plant

By Scott Blair

At $106 million, the new Butler Water Reclamation Plant in Peoria, Ariz. is the largest project ever attempted in the municipality. The plant will convert 10 million gallons of sewage every day into reclaimed water to recharge the Valley’s drained aquifer.

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For any growing desert city, water is of paramount importance. For the city of Peoria northwest of Phoenix, that meant taking on its largest project ever: the $106 million Butler Water Reclamation Facility.

Crews from Sundt Construction started the construction manager at-risk project in July 2006. Contractors plan to finish the 10 million gallon-a-day expansion in July.

As part of the same contract, crews are building nearly 8.5 mi of pipeline and a pumping station to divert the flow from the city’s existing gravity sewer system to the plant site.

The Phoenix office of engineering firm Black & Veatch is the design engineer.

The $106 million Butler Water Reclamation Plant in Peoria will treat up to 12,500 households. Photo courtesy Sundt Construction

For years, Peoria sent its effluent to a plant in neighboring Tolleson. “We were not getting any credit for that water,” says Shawn Kreuzwiesner, Peoria’s utilities engineering manager.      A water recharge credit program to exchange treated water with potable groundwater was instituted in 1980 by the state of Arizona to protect dwindling groundwater and is managed by the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

When operational, the new plant serving 12,500 homes in an area of Peoria south of Beardsley Road will send treated water to the New River Agua-Fria Underground Storage Project. Phoenix-based utility Salt River Project developed the NAUSP, located near the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, in order to store large amounts of water deep underground in the natural aquifer.

“By putting our treated water into the NAUSP facility, we’ll be getting recharge credits that we can then use to pump out of our potable water production water wells and into our water distribution system,” Kreuzwiesner says. “This new facility is not just treating the waste flows but is actually giving the city a renewable water resource.”

 The majority of the underground structures at the Peoria facility are cast-in-place concrete, utilizing approximately 21,000 cu yds, says Andrew Apostolik, senior project manager with Sundt. Structural steel framing with masonry shells comprises the above-ground structures.

The city chose a relatively new technology, membrane bioreactor, as the treatment process. “You can use membrane filters in place of secondary clarifiers and filters in a traditional plant,” says Brad Hemken, PE, project manager with Black & Veatch. “The membrane filters act both as the solid separation in the biological process and in the final filtration, plus at the same time give you high-quality, highly filtered water.”

Bill Frederick, project manager with Tempe-based University Mechanical & Engineering Contractors, says the new technology is “exciting in our industry.” His firm is installing the membrane system assembly as well as all the process piping, plumbing and HVAC at the plant and the HVAC and plumbing at the pump station.

Sundt utilized building information modeling to create a 3D representation of the underground piping, duct banks, structural concrete and shell components of the project.

“Our [BIM] structural model is built pour-by-pour and tied to our construction schedule,” Apostolik says. “It was even used to demonstrate the sequence of work to our field crews to help them understand and plan their work more efficiently.”

Frederick adds, “It was really useful. We could see how our piping underground was layered and you could identify collisions there as well.”

Sundt led the construction team in utilizing the Lean Construction and Last Planner System project delivery methods, which are intended to increase communication and accountability among the team. “It helps us plan our work so everyone knows what’s going on and we all do it as a team,” Frederick says. “It’s a matter of identifying your critical path and all the dependencies of who has to have what ready in which sequence for the end result.”

The Butler project site will eventually be bordered by a municipal park. Rendering courtesy Black & Veatch

The pump station, located 2.5 mi from the plant, is being built adjacent to the new Park West Mall at 99th and Northern avenues, so crews have had to make sure their underground work is done before the mall opens, Kreuzwiesner says.

The biggest challenge on the pipeline, which uses both 30- and 36-in. pipe, has been working around major city streets, according to Apostolik. The excavation for the pipeline, which is between 6 and 9 ft deep, has required several closures to major intersections.

The plant features architecturally interesting details such as arched standing-seam metal roofs. “We tried to marry architecture with the function of the plant,” Hemken says. An advantage of the membrane technology was that “it yields a small footprint in a single integrated structure, in which we could hide the more utilitarian components,” he adds.

While only bordered by an industrial park and municipal building now, the plant will soon have a new municipal park as a neighbor, so aesthetics were important to the city, Kreuzwiesner says.  

Key Players

Owner: City of Peoria
Design/Engineer: Black & Veatch
CM at Risk: Sundt Construction
Mechanical: University Mechanical & Engineering Contractors
Electrical: Sturgeon Electric
Other Subcontractors: Sundt Concrete; Sundt Heavy Civil; Able Steel; MAG; Opt Co; CS&W Contractors; MKB; Kovach

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