Water technology firm, Xylem, has won a contract to provide its filtration technology to a water treatment plant in La Verne, California.
Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District has commissioned Xylem as part of a project at its FE Weymouth Water Treatment Plant to retrofit biologically active filtration and ozone. Xylem will supply its Leopold Type XA underdrains with IMS 200 media retainers and Leopold dual media sand and anthracite to the 75-year-old plant which treats water from the Colorado River Aqueduct and the State Project Water (SPW) California Aqueduct.
Weymouth plant manager, Jim Kostelecky, said, “The Xylem Leopold Type XA underdrains provided us with an opportunity to remove the old underdrains and support gravel and install substantially deeper layers of sand and anthracite, without a significant impact to the plant’s existing hydraulic profile.” He said earlier full-scale testing indicated that the retrofit filters will prove to be “a far more robust filtration process, which will be in service for another 75 years or more.”
Xylem will supply more than 86,200 m³ of Leopold Type XA underdrain with IMS 200; 3,284 tonnes of sand; and 5,738 tonnes of anthracite for the project.
Technical Sales Manager for Xylem Leopold products in North America, Matt Schomaker, said, “A highly specialized media specification was desired by the Metropolitan Water District to enhance filtration performance. The Leopold Type XA was the preferred underdrain on this project due to its innovative design, efficient backwash performance, and reliability that comes with the solution’s increased uplift resistance.”
Construction on the plant is already underway and phase 1 of the new system is due to be operational in Q1 2016.
Xylem said its Leopold IMS 200 media retainer will replace up to 35.6 cm of support gravel to give a lower profile. It will allow for additional driving head and increased filter run times the company said. The Type XA underdrain deployed at Weymouth “offers unsurpassed backwash air and water distribution, reliability, and performance,” Xylem added. Its uplift resistance, at 30 pounds per square inch is “more than any underdrain on the market,” said Xylem.