Waterworks Blog
Lehigh County Authority Employees Win Two Wastewater Treatment Awards
November 26, 2019LCA was honored with two awards from the Eastern Pennsylvania Water Pollution Control Operators Association earlier this month. The first award, for Industrial Pretreatment, recognizes the staff at LCA’s Industrial Pretreatment Plant in Fogelsville and The Kline’s Island Wastewater Treatment Plant in Allentown for their diligent work to meet the requirements of the EPA-mandated pretreatment…
Cold Weather Is Here — Protect Those Pipes and Meters From Freezing!
November 15, 2019All the water meters in the picture above needed to be replaced because they froze. With more cold weather on the way, it’s important to protect your pipes and meters. With just a little over a month before the official start of winter (Dec. 21), we’re already seeing temperatures that seem to indicate the…
LCA Wins Water Quality Award for 12th Year in a Row
November 5, 2019Congratulations to our great Water Filtration Plant team for receiving the Area Wide Optimization Program (AWOP) Award for the twelfth year in a row! The award is presented to participants that meet the American Water Works Association Partnership program’s water quality standards, which are much more stringent than standards set in place by the state Department…
On Oct. 23, Imagine a Day Without Water
October 22, 2019Can you imagine a day without water? No showers, no morning coffee, no working toilets — not even water for putting out fires. For some people, living without water is a daily reality. Yet most of us take for granted that when we turn on the tap, clean, drinkable water will flow out. That’s why…
Disinfection and Testing — the Final Steps in Wastewater Treatment
October 18, 2019Over the past several months, we’ve talked about why wastewater must be treated, and detailed each step in the treatment process at Allentown’s Kline’s Island Wastewater Treatment Plant. Now we’ve come to the final treatment step: disinfection, in which we use a chlorine solution to kill pathogenic (disease-causing) microorganisms before the wastewater is released into…
Tertiary Nitrification: How Ammonia Is Removed From Wastewater
October 3, 2019In our last post, we explained how plastic media filters remove contaminants during secondary treatment. Today we’re going to talk about the next level of treatment, which removes ammonia through a process called tertiary nitrification. As you can see from the picture above, it’s probably not what you imagine when you think of water treatment!…
How Is Liquid Waste Treated? It’s All About Biology
September 16, 2019As part of our ongoing series explaining the wastewater treatment process, we’ve discussed how solids are removed from wastewater, how we use waste to create energy, what happens to the byproducts of treatment, and even what happens to things that should not be flushed. Now we’re going to explain what happens to the liquid waste:…
Fire Hydrant Maintenance — Yup, We Do That, Too
August 23, 2019LCA crews have been hard at work this summer, flushing, painting and repairing hydrants throughout the city of Allentown. Maintaining hydrants is an important and ongoing task. Our crews inspect and test over 900 hydrants every year so that they’re in peak condition in case the fire department needs them. We look for leaks, check…
Eight Simple Steps to Protect Water Quality
August 13, 2019It’s National Water Quality Month — a perfect time to learn what you can do to help protect the sources we all rely on for clean, high-quality water. Here are eight easy steps that you can take to make a difference today: Wash your car at a car wash: Even though it might cost more than…
When You Clean Your Car, Keep Our Waterways Clean, Too
July 2, 2019It’s that time of year when many of us grab a hose, a rag and a bucket of soapy water to give our cars a good scrub. And while it’s great to find out your vehicle really isn’t that shade of muddy-gray you’ve gotten so used to seeing, washing your car yourself comes with a…