Don’t Settle for Less! Our clarifiers need your support.
If you live in or visit Duluth, it is likely you’ve seen our large signature “domes” that glimmer in the sunlight from every angle: from the top of Enger Tower; as you travel down Thompson Hill; or as you cross over the Blatnik Bridge. The domes are WLSSD’s mascot in a way, an iconic feature of the wastewater treatment process. The pot of gold to our wastewater treatment rainbow.
The largest domes that are the beacons of our wastewater treatment facility, known as secondary clarifiers, are just the tip of the iceberg. Each of the 4 secondary clarifiers can hold 2 million gallons of wastewater. Picture this—the dome-shaped top sits on a funnel-shaped bottom—and you end up with a giant ice cream cone structure. The shape informs its function. Let’s take a look.
When wastewater first gets to WLSSD, we screen out trash and grit, and provide the right environment for beneficial bacteria to breakdown and slurp up pollutants—cleaning up the wastewater in our “concrete river”. Then the wastewater flows into the clarifiers to quite literally, settle down. Wastewater solids like sticky, clumpy microbes; tiny tree bits; and itsy, bitsy Cheerio chunks settle to the bottom of the clarifier funnel, while cleaned wastewater “sits” on top. The clarifiers do just as their name implies – as the solids settle to the bottom and are then separated from wastewater, the wastewater becomes more clear – clarified! This step in wastewater treatment is crucial. We need the clarifiers to remove the majority of the suspended solids in order to send clean wastewater into the St. Louis River.
It just so happens that our clarifiers are in need of renovations. We have 4 secondary clarifiers, which is more than enough to get the job done; wastewater keeps flowing and we need to be prepared with redundancy in our equipment. However, if one clarifier goes down in need of repairs, we need the other three to be a good shape. Currently, this is not the case. Last year, WLSSD requested 7 million dollars in bonding bill funding to renovate one clarifier. No funding passed the legislature in 2021. We are asking the community and our legislators to support our request for funding THIS YEAR to keep our wastewater infrastructure standing strong. The time is now.
Recently, one of our clarifiers incurred damage in its central operating mechanism that required us to shut it down. The WLSSD Board approved 3 million dollars in reserve funds to investigate the source of the problem and to make the necessary repairs. While we don’t know the full extent of the damage yet, we need to remain vigilant because all four of our aging clarifiers could be susceptible to a similar failure.
This is a good reminder that WE CANNOT SETTLE FOR LESS! WLSSD will be making an increased request in the 2022 legislative session to cover half of the funding necessary to renovate all four clarifiers. Funding for critical wastewater infrastructure is our priority for this legislative session. We need your support now to ensure the continuation of clean water for environmental protection and public health. Talk to your state legislators today and remind them of the importance of WLSSD’s clarifiers for wastewater treatment—and a clean St. Louis River and Lake Superior. Thank you!