APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Officials at the Appleton Wastewater Treatment Plant said they are still producing clean water, just in a slightly different way.
“We had to stop treatment for specifically one process, and that’s our anaerobic digesters,” Plant Director of Utilities Chris Shaw said. “Our haltway station is here. There’s some preliminary processes that it goes through. We grind it, homogenize it, that sort of thing.”
The problem was a chemical substance known as a polymer; it was found blocking pipes. That interfered with the treatment cycle.
Shaw said the polymer is a common substance in wastewater plants but only when broken down and in significantly lower concentrations. The temporary chain of operations meets all requirements but isn’t up to the plant’s own standards.
“The community’s treatment system right now has an effluent or water quality standard that’s meeting Wisconsin administrative code,” Shaw said. “However we are not using anaerobic digestion. This process is integral to a wastewater treatment facility. And we have approval to bypass it, but we do have a product that’s not to the same treatment performance.”
Shaw said there’s no reason for plant employees, Appleton residents or businesses to be concerned. City officials are investigating who or what caused the incident.
“We’ll be working with internal departments here at the city to conduct a fact finding analysis of what happened here,” Appleton Mayor Jake Woodford said. “How this chemical was introduced, where it was introduced. But we’re not at the point of having conclusions drawn or making assumptions.”
Woodford said the other unknown is the cost to fix the issues. The next step is to determine how to make the plant fully operational again, while still being financially responsible.
“There will certainly be a cost,” Woodford said. “We’re also carefully documenting all expenses and work effort that’s being contributed from all city departments to respond, and we’ll maintain a detailed accounting of our response.”
Shaw said they will work with chemical experts to understand the full nature of what occurred so it doesn’t happen again.
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