Achieving environmental compliance and meeting a growing city’s wastewater treatment needs

City of Meridian Wastewater Treatment Expansion and Modernization

Once a small dairy farming town, Meridan is now one of the fastest-growing cities in Idaho and home to nearly 148,000 residents. With that growth and increasingly stringent discharge limits comes the need to expand and modernize essential services like the City of Meridian’s wastewater treatment system. To protect local rivers and streams and keep pace with future demand, the City partnered with our team to upgrade their filtration systems.

We explored different treatment options, studied water flow, and planned for future growth to design a more advanced, efficient system. Our preliminary engineering report and 30 percent system design proposed a new chemical building, a tertiary membrane filtration facility, an equalization system to reduce peak flows, and a new lift station for new filtration hydraulic requirements. Our process included considerations for constructability and maintenance of plant operations alongside design progress and capital cost controls.

Rapidly increasing market prices along with project estimates created budget concerns for the City. So, we used value-based decision-making with life cycle cost and quantitative scoring to prioritize recommendations and focus the scope of the project to address these concerns.

By modernizing and expanding their facilities, the City will meet strict National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) standards through 2040, stay within budget, plan for future needs, and keep operational maintenance as simple and cost-effective as possible moving forward.