MILWAUKEE — You might have seen a large building along Lincoln Memorial Drive, right on the lakeshore – it’s the Linwood Water Treatment Plant.
“The original designer knew he was putting this on the lakefront,” says Plant Manager Dan Welk. “He wanted it to fit on the shoulders of the shoreline.”
Dan is proud to say his team is putting out some of the cleanest water in the country.
But, before you can get to filters and chemicals, you have to start in the lake. 6,500 feet from shore and 600 feet below the surface are the plant’s raw water pumps.
“And they’re in sizes from 50 million gallons per day to about 95 million gallons a day,” Dan says.
Pumping has only begun at that point. Seven pumps will move water up into the building where it will be cleaned and sanitized.
“Two of those pumps are original to 1938,” Dan says.
And they still run – but Dan says more were added over the years to meet Milwaukee’s water needs. At one point, this building moved 53 billion gallons every year. Fortunately, low-flow appliances and conservation efforts have reduced demand.
“We’re doing, now, about 35 billion gallons per year,” Dan says.
All that water starts with a chlorine bath from one of two day-tanks – storing just what’s needed for a day’s worth of treating water.
“2,600 gallons, and we have two of them,” Dan says.
But sometimes, Dan and his team might use four day-tanks worth of chlorine. Good thing there’s plenty more where that came from just down the stairs.
“This is the main storage, we have four of [these tanks] and each one of them is about 17,000 gallons,” Dan says.
The chlorine bleach used in the Linwood plant is much stronger than what you’d use at home, so you might think it’s enough. But your water treatment team doesn’t mess around – they also use an ozone gas treatment.
“It’s very reactive,” Dan says. “It’s like 80% stronger than chlorine as a disinfectant.”
The ozone system was added after a cryptosporidium outbreak in 1993 killed dozens of people and made hundreds of thousands sick.
“Which was then the largest waterborne outbreak in the history of the United States,” Dan explains.
At the time, Milwaukee’s ozone installation was the largest in the country, and a direct response to the outbreak. Ozone gas is fed into massive tanks that you might mistake as basement hallway.
“Each of them is a million gallons,” Dan says. “We have two on this side [of the plant] and two on this side.”
At the bottom of each tank, you’ll find a frame of pipes holding ozone contactors.
“All we’re doing is pushing the ozone gas through this so it just bubbles out,” Dan explains. “Kind of like something you’d have in your aquarium.”
The ozone and the water spend a full day floating together. Then it’s onto the last step – filtration and coagulation. Crews add aluminum sulfate to help capture dust and dirt in the water.
“And it forms a flock, and the flock looks like a snow globe,” Dan says.
Then all of that is passed through a filter bed full of sand and anthracite.
“It’s brilliantly designed because somehow these engineers back in the 1930s laid it all out,” Dan says. “From here, everything flows by gravity. It doesn’t need to be repumped, so it saved a ton of money on energy and a pumping station. It’s just brilliant how they did this.”
But the staff isn’t just relying on the original designers’ expertise. Jason Otto, Water Quality Operations Manager, says they’re checking their work all the time.
“I think the consumers of Milwaukee would be shocked – not just that we have a lab like this, but the capabilities of a lab like this,” he says.
Jason tests for all kinds of germs and substances at every step of the water treatment process.
“We want to make sure the water is safe and clean to drink,” he adds.
And if it’s not, you can talk to the Water Plant and Systems Manager Art Fink. He and his team in the control room monitor it all.
“What our chlorine residuals are, what our phosphate residuals are, all these different benchmarks that we have to meet to make sure we’re producing water that meets our regulatory requirements,” Art says.
But once the water is ready to drink, how does it get to your faucet? Head over to the Riverside Pumping Station.
“We pump into homes,” says John Bielinski, a Water Plant Operations Manager.
He says the Riverside Pumping Station handles more than 200 million gallons of water per day.
And because of several locomotive-sized generators, you should never be without running water, even in the face of a massive power outage.
“Very proud of that, yes,” John says. “You will always have water in the city of Milwaukee.”
Pride is a common theme with the Milwaukee Water Works crew. The cryptosporidium outbreak was an important lesson learned, hear and elsewhere.
“The country as a whole is now better because that terrible event happened,” John says.
It’s a time in history no one wants to repeat.
“This is 24/7/365, and we don’t get a chance to do it over,” Dan says. “It’s got to get done right every single time.”
And these guys take this job very seriously.
“Many of the people that work here are here because they enjoy serving the community and they enjoy making sure that their neighbors have a good supply of safe drinking water,” Art says.
“The best!” adds John. “We have the best in the country, the best water in the country for sure.”
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