When most people flush the toilet, they don’t give it a second thought. But treating waste-filled water and sending clean water back into the river is essential to maintaining public and environmental health. The City of Moline operates two wastewater treatment plants as Moline is in between the Rock River and the Mississippi River with north and south running slopes.
treats all sanitary sewer flow within Moline from Avenue of the Cities to the Mississippi River.
a regional facility treating wastewater from three areas outside of Moline
A similar south sloping area of East Moline
All of the Village of Coal Valley
The Quad City Airport area to Indian Bluff Road
can treat about 17 million gallons of wastewater per day, and is situated on 26 acres including several outdoor tanks or basins. The wastewater is processed through mechanical and biological stages on its way to meeting EPA requirements for discharge to the Rock River.
uses conventional activated sludge, RBC’s (rotating biological contractors), and anaerobic digestion in the process. Once wastewater comes to the plant from sanitary sewers, large solids are removed by bar screens, grit chambers and by settling in tanks. While primary treatment uses devices to remove waste, secondary treatment uses biological methods such as bacteria that consumes waste materials.