Water Treatment

The City and County of Broomfield’s Water Treatment Facility is a state-of-the-art, 20 million gallon-per-day conventional Water Treatment Facility. The total water production for 2012 was 3,888,641,000 gallons. Of that total, the City and County of Broomfield's facility produced 2,509,077,000 gallons. Denver Water produced 1,380,124,000 gallons. The peak production day was 23,452,000 gallons on June 25, 2012. The average use for a typical family home in the United States is 163,000 gallons of water per year.
Sedimentation Basins

What does it take to treat the water?

The process consists of coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, fluoridation, and disinfection. The influent metering/control vault measures and controls the flow of raw (untreated) water into the treatment process. The majority of the treatment process components are automatically controlled via computers based on flow metering at this structure. The rapid mix basins are where chemicals are added and mixed with the water. These chemicals are needed to remove the extremely small suspended solids from the water. The flocculation basins provide an environment where the chemicals and the suspended solids interact to accumulate into larger masses called "floc." In the sedimentation basins, the majority of the "floc" settles out of the water, and the supernatant is drawn off and conveyed via underground piping to the facility’s building for filtration.

Filters
The filters consist of an under-drain system, silica gravel, garnet sand, silica sand, and anthracite media. The media has a total depth of 40". These filters will remove the remaining solids or colloidal material.

The water will then flow into a disinfection tank. The chlorine is added at the beginning of this tank, which has a serpentine configuration to ensure enough contact time between the water and chlorine for complete disinfection to take place. The water flows through this tank into the clearwell. The pH corrective chemical (soda ash), the corrosion inhibitor (sodium silicate), and the fluoride additive (sodium silicofluoride) are added at this time. A solution of aqueous ammonia is also added to convert the free chlorine to combined chlorine as the final disinfectant residual for the distribution system.

Chemical Room
Chemicals used by the Broomfield Water Treatment Facility:
  1. Aluminum Sulfate – coagulant
  2. Polymer – coagulant aid
  3. Powdered Activated Carbon – taste and odor
  4. Sodium Hypochlorite – disinfectant
  5. Sodium Silicate – corrosion inhibitor
  6. Sodium Silicofluoride – fluoridation
  7. Aqua Ammonia – disinfection
  8. Sodium Carbonate (Soda Ash) – pH correction
From the clearwell, the water is transmitted through pipelines to storage tanks for distribution to Broomfield.


Storage Tanks
The principal law governing drinking water safety in the United States is the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). Enacted initially in 1974, the SDWA authorizes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) to establish comprehensive national drinking water regulations to ensure drinking water safety.

Drinking water regulations are issued by a regulatory agency under the authority of federal, state, or local laws. These regulations, established by the USEPA, typically require water utilities to meet specified water quality standards. Regulations also require that certain monitoring be conducted, that specified treatment be applied, and that suppliers submit reports to document that the regulations are being met.

The quality of Broomfield's water is constantly being monitored from the source to the consumer’s tap to ensure the highest quality is maintained. See the Current Annual Water Quality Report (Printable Version) for more information.

For more information, please contact us at 303-464-5600 or email