Water - Wastewater

Smith Engineering traditionally brews its own beer for Christmas gifts. Upon completion of a new sewage treatment and collection facility, Corona Mayor Bill Hignight raised a bottle of SEC-brewed ale, and ceremoniously smashed it over the bucket of a backhoe. While engineer Allen Bolinger (in necktie) joined the fun. {photo courtesy of Corona treasurer and clerk Janet Verna}

For months, City of Portales had a problem that folks couldn’t really see, but whewww … everybody could smell it. A strong aroma was wafting from the local wastewater plant. So strong, in fact, the regional university was at odds with the City, feeling that the stench was damaging the recruitment of students. Further, the treatment plant was not meeting government regulations.

What to do? What to do?

Enter the water/wastewater professionals from Smith Engineering Company. Quickly, our staffers changed the flow path, moved equipment, and recommended process changes and … ahhhh … in weeks, the odor was eliminated. Residents could open their windows in the evening and the plant was brought into compliance. Once again, the high plains of eastern New Mexico were crisp, clean and fresh. Better yet, Smith Engineering accomplished all this without the expense of building a new plant.

“The key is understanding the processes, and how they work,” Smith project manager Dan Boivin says of his trouble-shooting team.

Similarly, SEC engineers fought back a challenge for the City of Deming. With budgets depressed, the staff had not been able to upgrade wastewater treatment systems as they wanted for many years, which left the plant out of compliance. The result was aged infrastructure with dated technology. The community needed serious improvements to its 8 million gallon-per-day partially aerated lagoon system.

Our company engineers came in and nearly quadrupled the capacity to a daily 3.0 million gallons, enhancing the partially aerated pond system to a high-performance operation with nutrient removal and polishing. They then provided for reusing the effluent on local cropland, the municipal golf course, and as cooling water at the local power plant. Cost: $2.5 million, a fraction of what the City would have paid for a new plant.

On an even grander scale, our engineers have been called on to design a massive multi-million dollar project that will deliver water from Ute Reservoir near Tucumcari to residents in Clovis, Elida, Grady, Melrose and Portales, communities miles and miles from the lake. Big idea. Big job.

At Aztec in the Four Corners, SEC engineers not only worked with the community to overcome wastewater challenges but are ensuring the quality of water released into the Animas River watershed with innovative, cost-saving trace nutrient removal technology for reuse -- the first of its kind in New Mexico.

So it goes. Projects large and small.

Success stories in water and wastewater management stretch from West Texas throughout New Mexico into southern Colorado, as our heady pros stand with municipalities in finding solutions to tough problems.

Need experienced eyes to examine your drinking water system? Your treatment plant need attention? If you have a challenge with water or wastewater in your community, the veteran water/wastewater teams at Smith Engineering are poised to provide answers. Call one of SEC’s five offices.

Working within your budget, our engineers will do for you what they have creatively done for so many, for so long.