Water Treatment Plant on Wheels

This article originally appeared as the front cover story of the Q3 2023 Edition of the Rural Water Magazine.

There is a quote by Jennifer Pahlka that says, "When one neighbor helps another, we strengthen our communities." When the Town of Essex, N.Y., needed help, Morris Coolidge, New York Rural Water Association (NYRWA) Circuit Rider, stepped in, exemplifying the Rural Water way of helping communities.

The Town of Essex, near Lake Champlain, was preparing to replace and upgrade its water treatment facility. The catch: due to space, the project required the new plant to be in the same space as the old one, which meant the plant had to be decommissioned. Essex needed to find a way to continue providing drinking water to its more than 600 residents for the duration of the project, which was expected to take three to four months.

When they began planning this project, the town's board of directors asked Coolidge to attend their meetings since he had an established relationship with them, having helped with leak detection, emergency response plans, and other needs over the years. As a result, Coolidge helped the town apply for New York's Department of Homeland Security temporary filter trailers; unfortunately, however, the request was denied because it was considered a planned outage, not an emergency.

Next, the board of directors explored the option of renting temporary filters from a private company, which came with a price tag of $225,000, Coolidge said. At that point, they were unsure if they could move on with the project due to the cost, which got Coolidge thinking, Why don't we just build our own trailer?

"I started scribbling on a piece of paper and getting a rough idea of the materials I would need to build a trailer myself and I came up with a preliminary price of under $50,000," Coolidge said.

He met with the Department of Health; the Essex water operator, Tina Gardner; the town supervisor, Ken Hughes; and the engineers to propose a design for the trailer — and the idea was approved! From there, the engineers took Coolidge's design and developed the engineered design before sending the plans to the Department of Health for approval. The town of Essex also applied for and was awarded a grant to help offset the costs of building the trailer, said Jamie Herman, Executive Director for NYRWA.

The town of Essex asked Coolidge if he would be willing to build the trailer on their behalf and he agreed. "It was really something that I wanted to do for the community," Coolidge said.

Once the town received the green light from the Department of Health, Hughes ordered the trailer and had it delivered to Coolidge's residence, where his idea became a reality. It took Coolidge approximately 100 hours over the course of four months to build the trailer, with most of that being personal time.

The first step was to insulate the trailer to make it usable during the winter months. Then, Coolidge began building the filters and installing the necessary equipment. In the trailer, there are four banks of filters: 5-micron, 1-micron, and an absolute micron filter, along with three ultraviolet (UV) light units, which can handle 27 gallons a minute each, a chlorination system, SCADA system, turbidity meters, and particle counters for raw or unfinished water. The trailer is also equipped with a heater to prevent freezing. "It really is a complete water treatment plant on wheels," Coolidge said.

At full capacity, the trailer can filter up to 116,000 gallons of water per day. The filter banks can be run individually or all together, providing flexibility depending on the water system's needs. This also allows a bank of filters to be shut off and replaced if the need arises. The trailer can be set up to be run offsite with a computer or phone, and it can be used to filter water from a variety of sources, including fire hydrants, lakes, and ponds. Depending on the water source, the trailer can be up and running within an hour. For other sources, it may take up to four hours, Coolidge said.

After the trailer begins to filter water, Coolidge said they test the chlorination, total coliform and E. coli before the water can be used. Sometimes, depending on the location of the closest lab, waiting on test results is what holds up being able to use the trailer. Then, water operators at the plant where it is deployed will continue to test daily as they would normally with their treatment plant.

With so many details and complex parts, Coolidge needed some assistance during the building process. Todd Hodgson with the Essex County Department of Public Works helped install the SCADA system and ensure the components worked. "Without him, we probably wouldn't be where we are with the trailer," Coolidge said.

Steve Freeman, another NYRWA Circuit Rider, assisted with the plumbing in the trailer, but Herman said Coolidge did it all for the most part. "I have to give kudos to Morris because a majority of that filter trailer, he built on his own time in his own garage," Herman said. "He was very dedicated on his part."

Coolidge has served rural systems with NYRWA for the past 18 years. "My favorite part about my job is meeting really nice people and getting to assist people in need and rural communities," Coolidge said.

Once their project is completed, Herman said the Town of Essex's Board of Directors has agreed to sell the trailer to NYRWA for $1 so it can be used when other systems are in need.

"Rural Water is very thankful for what Essex has done by offering to sign the trailer over to us," Coolidge said. "In the end, we were able to come in under the $50,000 mark, which saved the Town of Essex money. It's a win-win situation for everybody, and we will have a portable water filter unit that we can take around to help other systems in New York state."

The trailer affords a new level of emergency response in New York state during natural disasters as well as everyday emergencies, Herman said.

When natural disasters happen, filtration tends to be the largest need. Because of funding requirements in New York, utilities are required to have a redundant power source to receive funding, so many utilities in the state have generators installed.

For this reason, Herman said NYRWA is looking into building an additional trailer to use during disasters and other emergencies.

"It takes a more proactive approach," Herman said. "We are able to deploy the trailer before it becomes a dire emergency by allowing the system to make necessary repairs without cutting off water and without being cost-prohibitive."

If a system is down for any reason, the trailer can be beneficial in providing water. If a system is under a boil advisory, Coolidge said they can set up the trailer in a parking lot to provide water to the impacted community. "There's not a week that goes by that I don't get a call from somebody looking to use it," Coolidge said.

The filtration trailer was deployed outside of Essex for the first time in early June 2023 when a neighboring town's wells went down. They asked permission to use the trailer and the Town of Essex allowed it.

Essex's plant upgrade project is expected to continue until the winter of 2023. And thanks to the help from Morris Coolidge, the town will be able to provide safe drinking water to the community throughout the duration.