HELENDALE COMMUNITY SERVICES DISTRICT SILVERLAKES WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANT PROCESS



Potable water that is used by the community and enters the drains of each home and business flows through a pipe called a lateral and enters into the District’s main sewer line and is conducted through 28 miles of sewer main underground to the Smithson Lift Station. Wastewater is pumped from the Smithson lift station to the Treatment Plant and enters directly into what is called the Headworks at the plant. The Headworks is a series of channels with Bar screens and an aerated grit chamber to remove a large portion of the inorganics (material that can’t be treated biologically) from the sewage.

The Helendale CSD Silverlakes WWTP is a secondary treatment plant with two Bio-filters being the main Biological mode of treatment.  with redundant primary and secondary clarifiers that separate the solids from the wastewater stream via both settling and floating solids. The solids that have been skimmed off  the top of the clarifier and that have settled in the clarifier’s hopper are pumped to the aerobic digester (solids handling portion of facility) to be mixed and aerated with bacteria that has been populated in the digester to consume the food source in the sludge. Once the detention time has been met in the digester, the solids are then pumped to the sand drying beds to be dried, collected and transported to a Biosolids composting facility. The secondary treated water from the treatment plant enters into two percolation ponds that recharges ground water and three pumps draw off each pond to be used for irrigation of various feed crops such as alfalfa.