Wright-Pierce News

Wright-Pierce Earns ACEC Engineering Excellence Grand Conceptor Award

Premier New England Installation of MIEX® Ion Exchange Water Treatment Technology

Wright-Pierce, a New England based water, wastewater and infrastructure engineering firm earned The Grand Conceptor Award from The American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) of Maine for the innovative upgrade design of the Nokomis Pond Water Treatment Facility in Newport, Maine.

The Grand Conceptor is the top award given in the annual Engineering Excellence Awards program that recognizes engineering projects which "epitomize quality, innovation, value and client satisfaction."

Thomas Todd, Superintendent of the Newport Water District, cited the project as the first in New England to use the innovative MIEX® Process, and a "good example of engineers tailoring the best, most cost-effective solution to our District's specific needs. The Wright-Pierce design provides quality water to our customers and helps insure compliance with state and federal mandates for many years to come."

The Nokomis Pond Treatment facility is a small treatment system by regulatory standards, which utilizes slow sand filtration as the core treatment process. The US EPA Disinfectant/Disinfection Byproduct Rules (Safe Drinking Water Act) required an upgrade to the facility to reduce the disinfection byproducts (DBPs) that were compromising water quality.

Wright-Pierce worked closely with the District pilot-testing several treatment alternatives before selecting the MIEX® process (Magnetic Ion Exchange). The MIEX® process is a pretreatment system that acts as a supplemental process prior to slow sand filtration to minimize the formation of DBPs and maximize natural color removal by utilizing a unique continuous ion exchange process. In addition to reducing water contaminants, this process also produces significantly less waste residuals which is environmentally sound and was an important design consideration because the existing site could not accommodate storage of waste residuals, and waste hauling costs were prohibitive. The MIEX® process has significantly improved aesthetic water quality, reduced DBP formation, and requires less use of chemicals for disinfection.

The upgrade design successfully integrated the treatment process into the plant's existing hydraulic profile, avoiding incurrence of additional energy costs for pumping. Efficient small motors and EPA Energy Star lighting were also cost saving design features.