Future Upgrades
Because the sewage plant has been recently upgraded it is in some aspects modern.  In some other ways it is a little behind the “cutting edge” and that is of concern to the communities on the Summit that need more capacity in order to accommodate current vacant lot owners or resorts that want to expand.  To do that further upgrades are necessary.  Further upgrades to the current “footprint” however will not accommodate larger development plans such as Foster/Symes Royal Gorge development.

The 2002 upgrades currently in the final stages, reduce ammonia and nitrates.

Future upgrades may include the addition of UV disinfection. This will reduce the daily backflow cleaning of the filters in the final stage of sewage treatment. Currently 500 gallons are used each day for this. The backflow water is then pumptd up to the equalization tank and reprocessed. Changing to a modern automated rotating filter system will not take less room but will use only 50 gallongs of water a day for clearning. Presumably the saved 4,500 gallons a day in new capacity would allow 15 new houses.

The drying beds are another old fashioned component of the sewage treatment process. Changing to either a centrifugal system or a belt pressing method will save much land and be more efficient.

Since this was originally written in 2007, there have been changes. The plant never ran as efficiently as it would have been hoped and incurred a "Cease and desist" order from the State. This will require substantial upgrades to the system to comply with State regulations and must be put in place by 2014.

Plans are underway to replace the plant with a more efficient plant using proven processes for cold climates. There will also be a increase in capacity in order to accommodate unbuilt lots in the DSPUD and SLCWD districts.

To make the plant more efficient effluent will be heated so that the bacteria can work efficiently. There will be more equalization storage so that high flows in our second home communities can be evened out so the bacteria will have steady flow. There will also be a new Membrane Bio-Reactor process to do the processing which is more efficient and UV processing at the back end. This will reduce chlorine needs and will help the plant comply with even more stringent State requirements that are coming

You can read an article about the need for the new plant and you can download 13 meg of facility report to find out all about the proposed plant. Both are PDF's.