The SURF wastewater treatment plant celebrates 15 years of cleaning and protecting water

RAPID CITY, SD (KOTA) – No one wants to drink or swim in dirty water, so the Sanford Underground Research Center’s wastewater treatment plant works around the clock to make sure that never happens.

“If we couldn’t dehydrate the water, we couldn’t do the experiments underground because the underground lab would fill with water, so in order to discharge the water, we have to treat it in our sewage treatment plant to make sure that the discharge into the environment safe,” said Bonita Hood, SURF’s environmental manager.

SURF celebrates its efforts to clean 10 billion gallons of water over the past 15 years, the equivalent of 15,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

“Everyone who works here, we all live here and we all love the Black Hills and we want to make sure we protect them. So it’s really an integral part of SURF,” said Hood.

Water Treatment employees follow a process to ensure that the water they collect underground has been treated before releasing it into Whitewood Creek.

“This water has a lot of iron, a lot of ammonia. So we’re going to remove that iron from the water through some mixed media filters, and the ammonia gets nitrified by the bacteria,” explained treatment plant manager David Johnson.

Johnson added that bacteria are used to reduce ammonia from nitrite to nitrate, making it safe to release into the environment.

“We’re going to be sampling that water several times a day and making sure it meets all the necessary water quality standards,” Johnson said.

SURF’s wastewater treatment plant operates under a permit from the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, which allows them to discharge treated water into Whitewood Creek.

“And it’s going to end up going into the Cheyenne (river) and eventually going all the way down through the Missouri (river) and into the Mississippi (river),” Johnson said.

Part of the water treatment process is temperature control, which ensures that the water reaches 75 degrees Fahrenheit before being discharged.

“Water coming from underground is inherently hot, true. I think it’s 95 degrees at 5,000 feet. And we have a limit on the temperature of the water we can discharge into the stream. So the cooler water coming from that tailings pond is actually helping us meet the discharge limit,” Goode said.

She says that since SURF bought the plant in 2008, they have achieved 100% compliance with water treatment.

“Wastewater treatment is extremely important, and we’re very proud of 15 years and 10 billion gallons of water discharged that have no negative impact on the environment,” added Hood.

SURF water treatment facilities will strive to maintain their expertise in keeping water clean for the next 15 years and beyond.

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