​The City of Hoschton’s Wastewater Treatment Facility (WWTF) could not properly
treat the 500,000 GPD capacity authorized by EPD in its NPDES Permit. In
addition, during intense rainfall events, high levels of infiltration and inflow (I/I) into
the facility would impede the plant’s ability to properly treat the wastewater. As a
result, the City was hampered from growth and expansion because of the limitations
in accepting new sewer customers of any appreciable size. The facility needed to
be able to accept, assimilate, treat and discharge a high-quality effluent as required
by their permit.
In order to help with the above-mentioned issues, the City began a program to
rehabilitate its sewer collection system by evaluating the sewer collection
system and rehabilitating a portion of the system over a number of years. However,
since the WWTF is the heart of the system the problems at the WWTF needed to
be addressed first to head off imminent fines and penalties from EPD due to
exceeding permitted flow limits.
The effects of the economic recession had a large impact on the City of Hoschton
and previous improvements to the WWTF had placed a large debt service burden
on the City. The City needed to make necessary improvements in order to operate
its plant as designed without the addition of much debt service. To help facilitate
these issues, the City of Hoschton contracted with Engineering Management, Inc. to
develop a plan of improvements and to evaluate the treatment capacity of its
limiting treatment units. EMI created a phased improvement plan to increase
treatment performance and replace faulty equipment.