EDMUND H. SARGENT WATER TREATMENT
PLANT CONTROL SYSTEM UPGRADE
town of wilrmingion massachusetts
The Town of Wilmington selected Weston & Sampson to provide design and
construction services for the Edmund H. Sargent Water Treatment Plant (WTP) contro!
system upgrade. The WTP treats water drawn from two separate well fields and a
large gravel packed well. These wells not only contain high concentrations of iron
and manganese, but also reside in a region where groundwater contamination from
the volatile organics is a distinct possibility. For these reasons, we designed a highly
flexible treatment process.
The treatment process consists of aeration, coagulation, flocculation, tube
sedimentation, deep bed carbon filtration, and disinfection. Chemicals added during
the process include potassium permanganate, polymer, alum, lime, and chlorine.
The combination of the processes and the chemicals resolved the iron, manganese,
taste, and odor problems while providing the ability (via the aeration and deep bed
carbon filtration) to remove volatile organics, if they occur.
The design incorporated a micro-computer-based contro! system. This system
provided for interactive graphic control of all the equipment including the speed
of the pumps at the remote well stations, maintenance and operational logging
functions, report generation, data retrieval, and historical trending. The MTU at the
Sargent WTP was replaced while maintaining plant operations. The SCADA system
upgrades included work at the Browns Crossing and the Salem Street raw water
pump stations as well as control system hardware and software upgrades
Our facility design incorporated the simple principle of providing optimal water
treatment performance while reducing capital, operations, and maintenance costs.
To this end, the Edmund H. Sargent Water Treatment Plant incorporates numerous
innovative ideas.
VSDs with high-efficiency motors operate all major pumping equipment. The
substantially less electrical requirements of these systems also reduce the
operational costs. The reduction in the size of the standby power system required
reduces the capital costs. Lastly, the VSDs operational flexibility is enhanced in both
the raw and finished water pumping systems. Having all five of the raw water pumps
operate on VSDs allows the operator to accurately control the volume of water from
each source. The VSD system on the finished water pumps gives the operator the
ability to match the pump rate with demand or with treatment volume.
westonandsampson.com
~@ construction
sequencing to maintain
plant operations
m replaced foxboro
control system with
open architecture
PLCs
client contact
Michael Woods
Superintendent
Town of Wilmington, Massachusetts
978-658-4714
Weston(&) Sampson
