Affordable & Efficient Design Solutions: Pearce Lane Wastewater Treatment Plant

This project was a redesign of a proposed phased wastewater treatment plant for a residential community in the City of Austin’s jurisdiction. As part of a development agreement, the project developer was responsible for design and construction of the wastewater treatment plant, that when completed was turned over to the City of Austin for ownership, operation and maintenance. An initial plant design by another firm proved too expensive at approximately $11,500,000. Our firm was retained as a subconsultant to the prime project engineering firm to redesign the plant. The redesigned plant utilized a more compact common-wall design and provided for a more economical three-phase plant of 400,000 gpd per phase to provide the 1.2 MGD build-out capacity. The redesigned plant was based on a Modified Ludzack-Ettinger activated sludge process with tertiary filtration to meet a stringent effluent parameter set that included both nitrogen and phosphorus nutrient removal.

Project Scope:

Alternatives analysis of innovative options resulted in significant reduction in capital and O&M costs. For example, the plant design with 37 percent more capacity (than the original design) was constructed for $21.58 per gallon instead of the original $38.33 per gallon design.

Provided project redesign to lower plant project cost from $11.5M to $8.6M for 30% larger, 400,000 GPD plant, permitting and construction phase services.