On average, the plant produces 80 million gallons of water, which is equivalent to 40 miles of railroad tanks cars. Water is first pumped from the Nueces River into a series of screens to remove leaves, sticks, fish and other large debris. Before the water is allowed to reach the water treatment plant, it must goes through a pre-treatment process to allow the water to coagulate or clump large flowing particles. Chemicals are added to the water to allow the water to again coagulate, causing very fine particles to clump together into larger particles. A flash mix basin serves to mix chemicals into the raw water to allow fine particles that will not readily settle or filter out of the water.
Chlorine is added to the water to kill most disease-causing organisms.
Additional coagulation and flocculation takes places to allow particles to gather together fine, light particles to form larger particles, known as floc, to aid in the sedimentation and filtration processes. Water is sent to sedimentation basins to allow larger suspended particles to settle. Thereafter, additional chemicals are added to control corrosion in the water. As a final treatment process, water is sent through a filtration process to filter out remaining suspended particles. This provides a chlorine residual essential in the distribution system.