Five other banks of UV disinfection units can come on line if they're needed to handle the flow through the plant. Treatment plant operations require highly skilled staffing. Laboratory experts monitor the progress and performance of the treatment process and fulfill regulatory requirements while operators and maintenance staffers keep the systems and equipment functioning or ready for service if needed. Without those process controls, we'd need twenty people or more to keep us up and on line. At the start of every day, experts on the staff review computer screens for reports on overnight operations.
Computer reports on anomalies lead to control adjustments or equipment repairs.
The staff also operates belt filter presses two or three days per week, pressing moisture from sludge to produce an exceptionally dry odorless biosolid that crumbles into a powdery texture between your fingers. This plant byproduct could one day be used to enrich cropland. Designed by Buchart-Horn, the Dover plant serves a high development area north of York, protecting the environment with very high quality effluent into the Little Conewago Creek that flows to the Susquehanna River on its way to the Chesapeake Bay. Construction began in spring of '96 to double the capacity of an existing 4 mgd plant on the Dover site to 8 mgd while also upgrading the headworks, process control systems, and the sludge processing system. The headworks features a special biofilter that deodorizes the air from the raw sewage influent wet wells.