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Millennium Power Partners Power Plant Project
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Click image to enlarge | Millennium Power Partners, L.P. (MPP) was in need of an environmentally sound and economically viable water resource to provide cooling water to its 400-megawatt power plant in Charlton, Massachusetts. After considering feasible alternatives to valuable, high-quality natural surface and ground waters, MPP took on the challenge of demonstrating the viability of secondary use of treated wastewater. MPP constructed a wastewater reuse facility that utilizes treated effluent from the Town of Southbridge’s municipal wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) to supply cooling water of adequate quality and quantity to its power plant. Factors complicating this wastewater reuse option were regulatory acceptance, distance between the WWTP and the power plant, crossing of environmental resources, and a severe elevation differential within the project site.
Weston & Sampson performed an initial assessment of cooling water need, wastewater quality, and tertiary treatment; a facilities layout and pipeline routing study; final design; and construction services for this wastewater reuse system that provides up to 2.75-million gallons per day of cooling water to the power plant. Treated effluent, supplemented seasonally with water from the Quinebaug River, provides cooling water on a continuous basis. Cooling water waste is returned to the WWTP to be treated and used again. The first adaptive reuse of treated wastewater as a primary source for evaporative cooling for a power plant in Massachusetts, the MPP system is a sustainable design solution that mitigates environmental impacts to local water resources, yet provides an economical solution to the user, MPP, and a financial resource to the supplier, the Town of Southbridge.
For this project, Weston & Sampson received a 2005 Engineering Excellence Award from the American Council of Engineering Companies of Massachusetts (ACEC/MA).
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