Kane 'barn' will quench water thirst

At 38,000 square feet, it could be the largest non-agricultural "barn" in Kane County.

By January 2008, though, Geneva leaders hope their barn-shaped water treatment plant will be providing residents with softer, radium-free drinking water that complies to EPA standards.

"The primary goal of the project was to remove radium. The second was to reduce the hardness," said Barney Fullington, engineering manger for Black and Veatch, which helped design the $20 million plant.

When operational, the facility at Peck and Keslinger roads on the city's west side will use reverse osmosis to remove radium from water drawn from deep wells.

It also will soften water drawn from shallow wells.

The city uses about 4 to 5 million gallons per day in peak summer months, said Dan Dinges, public works director, prior to a tour of the construction site Monday.

The plant has a maximum filtration power of 8 million gallons per day, "which is our ultimate build-out peak. So hopefully, this will be the only plant we have to build," Dinges said.

City leaders don't expect to have to hire too many more workers to staff the plant.

Fullington said most of the operations are automated and controlled by computers.

"Water treatment plants used to be really labor intensive, when you'd have a huge staff opening and closing valves," he said.

About once a month, workers will have to change three drums of 276 paper membranes that help filter the water.

Long-term exposure to high levels of radium, a naturally occurring element in groundwater, has been linked to an increased risk of bone cancer, according to the EPA.

Construction on the plant began in June 2006. Several years ago, the city initially planned to build a plant that used lime to remove radium, but opted for the reverse osmosis option because it became cheaper.