Behind The Scenes
Engineers Are Among LCA’s Unsung Heroes
February 21, 2022The next time you wash the dishes, grab a drink from the tap, take a shower, use the toilet, or do your laundry … thank an engineer! Most of us don’t realize it, but if it weren’t for engineers, our water and wastewater couldn’t get from Point A to Point B. That’s why LCA is…
Where Does My Drinking Water Come From? How LCA Collects, Treats and Transports Your H2O
July 14, 2020Water, Water, Everywhere Clean water is one of those things you take for granted: When you walk into the kitchen and turn on the tap, it just flows out. But did you ever stop to wonder, “How did my water get here? Where does drinking water come from?” Over the next few blog posts, we’ll…
Businesses Create Wastewater, Too — How Does LCA Treat That?
January 17, 2020Above, LCA’s Pretreatment Plant in Fogelsville. Last year, we kicked off our Behind The Scenes at LCA series with a number of blog posts detailing the wastewater treatment process. Now we’re kicking off 2020 by adding to that series with a post about another important step in that process: the EPA’s Industrial Pretreatment Program. As…
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…
The Sludge Report: What Happens After Treatment?
June 19, 2019If you’re a regular visitor, you’ll know we’ve been doing a series of posts explaining how wastewater is treated. In our last post, we talked about why it needs to be treated — and what happens when it’s not. Today, we’re going to discuss one of the byproducts of treatment: sewage sludge. Sewage sludge is a…
Kline’s Island Gets New Electrical Substation as Part of Infrastructure Update
May 14, 2019The new Kline’s Island substation, above, includes provisions for additional power demands in the future. It’s National Infrastructure Week — a time to #BuildForTomorrow and “highlight the state of our nation’s infrastructure – roads, bridges, rail, ports, airports, water and sewer systems, the energy grid, telecoms, and more.” We usually think of water infrastructure…
Why Does Wastewater Need to be Treated?
May 1, 2019Above, untreated wastewater pollutes a waterway in India. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know we’ve been doing a series of posts explaining how wastewater is treated. In our last one, we talked about how solids are removed from wastewater, then sent to the primary settling tanks for stabilization and treatment. What we haven’t covered…
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