Water Reclamation Department

Excellent Achievement

The Elden Kuehl Pollution Control Facility achieves excellent removals which are consistently within the 90th percentile removal range. The facility adheres to proper and efficient means of operation. The upcoming expansion and upgrade of the wastewater treatment plant will allow the facility to continue excellence in the overall performance by including more efficient and modern technical means of process control.

ELDEN KUEHL POLLUTION CONTROL FACILITY

The Elden Kuehl Pollution Control Facility is the largest wastewater treatment plant in Porter County, Indiana and is located on the southwest side of the City of Valparaiso.  The facility is situated on approximately 40 acres within the City of Valparaiso.  The award winning facility is a Class IV Advanced Single Stage Air Activated Sludge Wastewater Treatment Plant with an average wastewater design capacity of 8.0 million gallons per day and a peak flow design capacity of 18.0 million gallons per day.

The Elden Kuehl Pollution Control Facility is operated and maintained for 24 hours each and every day of the year by the Department's highly trained professional staff.  
  

PROCESSES

 The plant's treatment processes incorporate physical settling, biological treatment, chemical addition and disinfection by ultraviolet irradiation before discharging the plant's effluent into Salt Creek.  The wastewater treatment units at the facility include influent flow monitoring, influent bar and fine screen grit removal, primary clarification, two (2) sets of trains of activated sludge biological reactors, phosphorous removal via ferrous chloride addition, secondary clarification, gravity filtration, disinfection, UV, re-aeration by three (3) static aerators and effluent flow monitoring.
 

BIOSOLIDS LAND APPLICATION

 Solids handling at the plant consists of gravity filtration, dissolved air flotation, anaerobic digestion and biosolids lagoon storage before the conditioned biosolids (about 4 million gallons/year) are land applied onto permitted farmland sites in Porter County.  The plant's biosolids are used as a beneficial fertilizer substitute and soil amendment for the local growing community.