A Brief History:
Prior to 1934, the City of La Porte (like most
cities during this time period) discharged it's untreated sewage
directly into the environment. In La Porte's situation, since
there were no natural rivers of streams to carry the waste away, a
man-made ditch (which was later to be called Travis Ditch) was dug
southwards to carry the waste away from the City and towards the
Kankakee River. Although this transported the sewage away from the
city, it did not endear the residents living south of La Porte. A
document from that time described the sewage filled ditch as an
"odious stench that rendereth the land unlivable".
As a result of the efforts of the downstream residents and the desire of
the city to be a good neighbor, the La Porte Wastewater Treatment Plant
(WWTP)
was first established in
1937.
The original design consisted of a rudimentary manual screening
process, followed by grit removal, primary settling, secondary
biological treatment (in the form of a fixed bed trickling filter),
secondary settling, then discharge to Travis Ditch.
This worked well for 20 years, then in 1954 the WWTP experienced its
first upgrade. Since the volume of wastewater coming into the
WWTP was increasing, an additional primary settling tank and secondary
biological treatment unit (an advanced rotary trickling filter) were
added.
It was almost 20 years after these improvements had been
added that in 1972 the US Congress passed the Clean Water Act.
This Act helped established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
and formally required communities to start cleaning up their
discharges into the Nation's Rivers and Waterways. As the Clean
Water Act began to be implemented across the country, restrictions on
the amount of pollutants that could be discharged into the environment
began to get tighter. La Porte's WWTP was starting to have
difficulty meeting some of the newer restrictions that were being
placed on it. In 1987, the WWTP's third expansion took
place. This expansion added improved screening, additional
primary and secondary settling capacity, and an entire new stage -
Advanced Secondary Biological Treatment and settling.
This treatment stage
was designed to help the WWTP meet the EPA-required discharge limits
for ammonia. Also during this expansion, the groundwork was laid
to implement a change from manual operations to a more automated
facility. Since the 1987 expansion, the WWTP has continued a
process of incremental improvements to its process and
facilities which should continue to be an environmental asset to the
community in the centuries to come.
