Background

CRRUA is responsible for the management and maintenance of the City of Sunland Park and Santa Teresa water and wastewater system, and for developing infrastructure improvement projects. To provide wastewater treatment, CRRUA relies on three facilities, the North Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP), the South WWTP and West Mesa WWTP.

The North WWTP was built in the 1970s to treat 0.5 MGD and the current hydraulic loading averages 0.7 MGD. This plant is not able to reliably meet its direct discharge requirements due to high organic and hydraulic loading; therefore, all of its waste stream must go to the South Plant. CRRUA currently relies solely on the South WWTP to treat the wastewater from the communities of Sunland Park and Santa Teresa. The South plant has the capacity to treat 2.0 million gallons per day (MGD) and the additional loading from the North Plant causes the South Plant to operate at capacity which severely limits the CRRUA’s ability to provide
adequate maintenance at the south plant or to accept new connections.

To prevent continuous untreated discharges, modifications to the North WWTP were implemented and is currently used to provide pretreatment before pumping the effluent stream to the South WWTP. Although this solution has avoided further exposure to inadequately treated flows, there is a significant risk of these conditions recurring.

Description

The proposed project consists of replacing the North WWTP with the construction of a new 1.0 MGD package WWTP using an extended aeration technology. The new plant will include the following components: rehabilitation of the View Pointe lift station, installation of
treatment basins, first and second stage aeration tanks, effluent flow meter; new pumps to discharge effluent to the Rio Grande, generator to support plant operations, especially in the event of a power outage, and an administration building.

Considerations for future expansion have been incorporated into the design, which will allow the plant to meet new demand driven by developers with phased expansion.

The plant’s effluent will be discharged approximately two miles south of
the North WWTP site.

Benefits

The replacement WWTP will increase wastewater treatment capacity to a total of 3.3 MGD eliminating the risk of untreated or inadequately treated wastewater discharges.

Also, the plant will treat the current average wastewater stream of 0.70 MGD to benefit 1,981 residential connections served by the North plant and have the capacity to treat additional demand resulting from natural, growth over the life of the plant. The plant can be expandable to meet future demand resulting from development led growth.