Omaha to get a big drink thanks to MUD

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BY ALGIS LAUKAITIS/Lincoln Journal Star

Thirty-five years ago, Omaha’s Metropolitan Utilities District began looking for land to build a third water treatment plant.

A site northeast of Yutan  showed promise but MUD found a better location — with a more productive aquifer and higher water quality.

In 1992, MUD began buying land about five miles north of the confluence of the Platte and Elkhorn rivers for the proposed water treatment plant and wellfields.  It sold the property near Yutan.

Today,  the Platte West Project, a $352 million water treatment plant designed to meet Omaha’s westward expansion, is on target to meet   its anticipated completion date in the summer of 2008.

The water treatment plant itself is nearly 65 percent done, said MUD project Manager Kevin Tobin.

Located at 216th and Q streets in Douglas County, the water treatment plant will be as long as three football fields and cover a total of 630,511 square feet, according to information on the district’s Web site.

MUD will rely on 42 wells to supply water, with 26 wells located on 1,190 acres in Saunders County and 16 wells on 1,040 acres in Douglas County.

The wellfield work is about 95 percent complete, Tobin said, and that portion of the project should be done by early summer.

“They will provide a little water for plant start-up. We won’t be fully operational until the plant goes on line,” he said.

The wellfield will be connected to the water treatment plant via a nearly four-mile-long pipeline, parts of which are under the Platte and Elkhorn rivers.

Two sections of the pipeline, both 48 inches in diameter, are under the Platte. A 72-inch diameter pipeline is buried under the Elkhorn. Both eventually connect in Douglas County.

The project is designed to boost the district’s pumping capacity by 100 million gallons per day.

Local landowners have criticized the project, saying it would lower water levels of lakes, ponds and wells in the area.

 John Miyoshi, general manager of the Lower Platte North Natural Resources District based in Wahoo, said the district has examined computer models done by MUD and the Corps of Engineers of how the increased pumping will affect local aquifers.

 One of the major concerns, he said, is how the pumping will affect cleanup efforts at the former Nebraska Ordnance Plant near Mead.  MUD’s facility is directly east of the ordnance plant, where efforts  are under way to remove toxic pollutants from the aquifer.

“If the groundwater reacts the way the models predict, there would be no problem,”  Miyoshi said.

However, there is a concern that the increased pumping could “knock the cleanup effort out of balance” and affect the way the water moves through the aquifer and into cleanup wells.

Miyoshi said MUD and corps officials continue to place safeguards

“to make sure that the aquifer behaves as the models have predicted.”

The NRD also is concerned about the loss of sub-irrigation in the area. Miyoshi said the increased  pumping could lower the water table by one to three feet. If that happens, the pumping could be costly to farmers who rely on the shallow water table to irrigate and grow crops.

Both Tobin and Miyoshi say the real impact of the pumping from MUD’s wellfields won’t be known until the water treatment plant is operational. Tobin said some testing of the wells will be done this spring and summer.

Platte West will join the district’s two other water treatment plants,  one on the Platte River south of Omaha near LaPlatte, and the other in north Omaha near Florence. The latter  facility pumps water directly from the Missouri River.

When all three water treatment plants are operational, MUD will have a total peak capacity of 334 million gallons per day. Tobin said the figure also includes some wells in Millard and Elkhorn.

Currently, MUD pumps more than 200 million gallons per day on a hot summer day.

“That’s one reason for the project. We’re getting close to our capacity,” Tobin said.

Reach Algis J. Laukaitis at 402-473-7243 or alaukaitis@journalstar.com.