Located south of the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, St. Louis’ water treatment facility on Riverview Road, processes 240 million gallons of river water each day. Combined with 120 million gallons of water processed at a second site located west of the city, the Water Division handles more than 360 million gallons of water daily.
St. Louis has a reputation for clean and great tasting tap water, and one reason may be that has good water sources to begin with, said Director of Public Utilities Curtis Skouby.
“Even though this plant is on the Mississippi River and draws from it as a source, it still treats primarily Missouri River water, because the two rivers haven’t fully mixed by the time it goes back by the plant here,” Skouby said. “There’s a lot of sediment in it, but there’s probably less trace of contaminants in there, because you don’t have Chicago’s discharge coming down the Illinois River.”
He said the Mississippi and Missouri are clean rivers.
“It doesn’t have a lot of organics like maybe some parts of Florida, for example, that they have a lot of plant life in the waterway and stuff, so it can impart a taste or odor,” Skouby explained. “Sometimes, well water can have the iron or sulfa or rotten egg taste. It’s just a good source of water.”
Skouby oversees more than 300 employees at two treatment facilities. Murky river water goes through a rigorous filtering, softening, clarifying and treatment process that takes from three to seven days before it is flows through the finished water pumping station to customers.
“It flows from one basin to another and these basins, you are having the solids drop out and having contact time for the disinfectant to kill the harmful microbes,” Skouby said.
At the intake site, there are six gigantic settling basins where residual sediment falls to the bottom and the water stays at the top. The process is helped along chemically by ferric sulfate, which attracts sediment molecules.
“It’s an iron compound that has a positive electrical charge. The turbidity in the water, which is usually clay material – they have a negative charge. So like a magnet, the charges attract each other and allows the clay particles to form a heavy enough particle to fall out,” Skouby explained.
Manmade polymers aid in the coagulation process. The water becomes clearer as it moves through each basin.
Lime limed in Ste. Genevieve, Mo. is used as a water-softening agent, Skouby said, to elevate the pH and remove hardness from the water and makes a big difference on the other side of the tap.
“We soften the water, which does a couple of things. It removes excess calcium from the water; it helps with needing less soap in the water when you do your laundry or do your dishes,” he described. “But it also helps out in the end for like corrosivity of the water, so that our water is a ‘depositing’ water. It deposits scale minerals on the inside of the pipe and actually forms a barrier between the water and the pipe wall.”
Skouby added the softening process is one reason why St. Louis would not have a water contamination tragedy like the one in Flint Michigan.
“It helps prevent rust, it helps prevent corrosion of any lead service line the homeowner might own,” Skouby said. “That’s one difference that we do have than Flint, Michigan.”
There are also layers of monitoring to make adjustments as needed and would indicate if there is a potential problem. The system can also shut down sections that need maintenance without disturbing the rest of the treatment process.
Chlorine and ammonia is added to kill germs and contaminants.
“And then, we chlorinate the water to disinfect it. It isn’t sterile water, but we remove the disease-causing microbes,” Skouby explained. “And then, we add carbon to the water –powder activated carbon that absorbs many of the taste and odors that may be objectionable in the river.
“We also feed it for atrazine; that is an herbicide that farmers apply in the spring. It is one chemical that we see in quantities high enough that we measure, and then the carbon removes it from the water so that we stay in compliance with it.”
The water is also fluoridated to help prevent tooth decay.
Even if you live outside the city limits of St. Louis, some of your water may come from city, as it sells its excess capacity water to nearby localities.
Along with new and revisited regulations, Skouby said replacing aging infrastructure is an industry-wide issue.
“The pipes can be over a hundred years old, so when you do the investment, it’s for multiple lifespans. So we are benefitting from probably what our grandparents and great-grandparents paid for to install,” Skouby explained.
“As we move forward in years, you’ll have more pipes to replace and renovations at the plants that need to be done. It’s not cheap and it’s a disruption to the customers.”
The City of St. Louis won a taste-testing contest a few years ago with the US Conference of Mayors and earned a new accolade this year.
“Across the country we are No. 1 – best tasting water,” Skouby said. “Here recently this year, we won a competition of the Missouri section of American Water Works Association … it’s the first ever that they did this taste contest and we won that and we are quite happy.”
Regarding St. Louis’ urban legend that Anheuser Busch located here because of the good water in St. Louis, or that St. Louis has good water because of AB – who knows for certain? The St. Louis Water Division became a publicly owned and operated water treatment facility in 1835 and the brewery that became Anheuser-Busch, now (AB InBev) began in 1852.
“Well, it’s a very high quality water we have and its’ relatively free of taste and odor,” Skouby added. “It’s unlike many parts of the country, we’re very fortunate that we have that.”
