When the Town of New Windsor, NY experienced contamination of its local water supply, officials responded quickly to assure a safe alternative source of drinking water and to begin immediate cleanup of the toxic situation. Their call for help went to Aztech Environmental who began cleanup operations, facilitated by an Allsite tension fabric structure put into service on the site. Within four months, the town’s water treatment plant was back online.
Chemical Contamination Threatens New York Town’s Drinking Water Supply
The new Butterhill Wells water treatment plant was put online in August 2018 to serve the Town of New Windsor. Soon after, routine water sampling detected the presence of minute amounts of PFOA and PFOS. These chemicals are present in materials such as non-stick coatings, personal products and firefighting foam. While still under investigation, the likely source in this case was a nearby Air National Guard base. While safe levels are still not fully defined in Federal law for these chemicals, they are known to cause cancer and other serious health problems, including low birth weight babies. When tests confirmed the continued presence of these chemicals at low levels in February 2019, the Town shut down the contaminated well and began a cleanup to restore safe drinking water to its residents.
Water Treatment Plant Remediation and Long Term Solution
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation contracted with Aztech Environmental Technologies to begin immediate eradication of the contamination. Because the Town needed to get its treatment plant back online quickly, Aztech rapidly devised a solution that is a model of effectiveness and efficiency for the water treatment industry. The solution involved GAC, granular activated carbon, which allows water to pass through the carbon as a filtration system that removes contaminants. To carry out this filtration on an ongoing basis, Aztech built, tested and brought the GAC system online in a matter of months. Today, it is part of the treatment plants operations.
The GAC system is housed in an Allsite tension fabric structure (TFS) which is permanently installed at the site to protect the filtration system equipment from the elements year round, especially during the snows and freezing temperatures of New York winters. The 20,000 pound carbon filters are 10 feet in diameter and treat 1500 gallons per minute. They are housed along with propane tanks and heaters that keep the interior of the building warm for year round functioning.
The TFS is lightweight and transported in modular sections to a worksite, where it is assembled and installed. The Aztech project site already had the water tanks and piping in place, so a wheel system was used during the TFS installation to slide the structure into place over the water filtration equipment.
A second Allsite structure was installed for Aztech at a nearby site that had very limited space. The solution was a custom width structure. Installation was also customized to accommodate the tight space. Since the building was only 3 bays, technicians were able to install the structure over the tanks, gaining access to it from the outside rather than being underneath the building. This meant the wheel system was not necessary as in the first installation.
The Allsite TFS comes in a range of widths up to 48m (157”) with unlimited customizable lengths in 5m increments. The first Aztech structure is 20m x 45m (66’ x 148’), while the second is 24.5m x 15m (80’ x 48’).
Allsite Tension Fabric Structures for Remediation Projects
Tension fabric structures are the preferred rapid response structure for remediation projects including Brownfield projects, ground and surface contamination, soil and sediment remediation, ecological revitalization and green remediation projects. The structures provide the needed speed, versatility, stability, contamination resistance and durability to serve in almost any location under a broad range of environmental conditions, including contaminated, saturated, frozen or uneven surfaces.
These lightweight, but structurally sturdy modular structures can be installed quickly and repositioned via crane lift if needed as work moves around the clean up site. Structures can be configured to fully enclose a worksite to contain contaminants and protect nearby environments and neighborhoods.
The structures can be sealed to create a negative airflow environment that captures fumes and particles in the air to be removed from the interior. The structures also feature high corners and high ceiling clearance, providing space for deploying large equipment, with peak heights of 8m (25 feet) – 16.5m (54 feet), or approximately 45% of the width of the structure.
For more information on Allsite Tension Fabric Structures for remediation or other environmental or public services projects contact Allsite Structures today at 1-888-599-5112.
