Fairmont, Minnesota, known as the City of Lakes, is in Martin County in southern Minnesota. Home to over 45 lakes, the region offers outstanding recreational opportunities and is considered a “gem on the prairie”. The city, with a population of eleven thousand people, is located on the shored of Budd Lake, the primary source of drinking water for the residents. The city’s water treatment plant serves a mix of customers including approximately 3,900 residential taps, 500 commercial and 17 industrial customers. The city of Fairmont maintains three water storage tanks and 83 miles of water mains within its distribution system. The largest industrial customer is a soybean oil producer that uses 250,000 to 300,000 gallons per day as process water in their production plant.
Looking to the future, Fairmont city leaders began to investigate upgrading the city’s water treatment plant in 2010. The existing plant had been in operation for well over 70 years and relied gas chlorine for disinfection. City leaders wanted to upgrade the treatment plant while reducing the risks associated with gas chlorine and simplifying overall plant operations, including reducing the regulatory burden associated with the handling and storage of hazardous materials. The City worked with engineers and came up with a design that increased the plant capacity, provided simplified, cost-effective operations and dramatically reduced the risks associated with gas chlorine. The result was a 31-million-dollar state-of-the-art water treatment plant with a capacity of 5.4 million gallons (MG) per day.