Hilliard Fletcher Wastewater Treatment Plant

The mission of the Wastewater treatment plant staff is to protect the environment by receiving and treating raw wastewater and producing treated effluent which meets or exceeds all regulatory effluent discharge requirements by the most economical and reliable means possible.   

There is one wastewater treatment plant that serves the entire sanitary sewer service area. The WWTP is rated for 30 million gallons per day of daily average capacity. The plant has a head works process, primary and secondary treatment systems along with a recently installed ultraviolet light disinfection system that replaced the chlorine disinfection process previously used. The system is positioned to add 15 MGD in 2013 for a 45 MGD build-out capacity rating. The plant currently digests primary sludge in an anaerobic digester and dewaters the sludge produced for final disposal at the local Subtitle D landfill. Plans are to begin land application on abandoned coal mine slag piles east of Tuscaloosa as soon as site engineering reports can be completed and forwarded to ADEM. The primary treatment section is a group of circular clarifiers. The secondary treatment system is composed of four activated sludge basins – two which were built in 1974 and two which were completed in 1994. The plant has not failed to meet permit requirements or limits in over five years on any permit parameter listed in the NPDES discharge permit.