Wastewater Treatment
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The City of Aurora’s Wastewater Treatment Facility has responsibility for wastewater collection, lift stations and the operation of the wastewater treatment plant.
Aurora’s Wastewater Treatment Plant was built between 1995 and 1996. In 2012 The City of Aurora did a $2,852,000 Plant Expansion Project to double the size of the plant. The WWTP has a Vulcan stair screen for debris removal, two – 1,000,000 gallon oxidation ditches, two fifty-foot clarifiers each with 220,000 gallons of capacity and a 60-foot clarifier with a capacity of 318,000 gallons.
The Plant has four 360,000-gallon aerobic digesters and we dewater using a 2.1-meter Ashbrook belt press. The Plant produces 700 tons of biosolids each year that are stored on site until they are land applied each spring and fall. We also have a 14-acre facultative lagoon that we can use to divert flow to during maintenance and also for additional capacity.
The City of Aurora Wastewater Treatment Plant is a State of Nebraska Class II facility. Currently, the plant has a staff of two operators. In-house daily and weekly testing for pH, T.S.S., B.O.D., conductivity, ammonia, and nitrate is performed by the staff.
We have an average annual flow of 261,570,800 gallons and daily average flow of 716,632 gallons per day over the last five years. The annual flow totals and average daily flow for the last five years are listed below. An ethanol producer and pet food manufacturer are the primary industrial wastewater customers.
| Year | Annual Flow Totals (Gallons) | Daily Average (Gallons) |
| 2022 | 193,230,000 | 523,000 |
| 2021 | 213,728,000 | 586,000 |
| 2020 | 220,196,000 | 605,000 |
| 2019 | 227,550,000 | 623,424 |
| 2018 | 328,590,000 | 900,246 |
| 2017 | 317,790,000 | 870,657 |
| 2016 | 323,580,000 | 886,520 |
| 2015 | 337,050,000 | 923,424 |
Our discharge NPDES permit requires us to discharge less than:
- 25 mg/L of B.O.D.
- 30 mg/L of T.S.S.
- 2.95 mg/L Ammonia (Winter)
- 1.55 mg/L Ammonia (Spring)
- .86 mg/L Ammonia (Summer)
- also a maximum kilogram per day limit required on the above-mentioned discharges.
The City of Aurora WWTP discharges its effluent water into the Lincoln Creek.
480kW Solar Array
In 2017 the City added a 480kW solar array at the Wastewater Treatment Plant. This project was done by GenPro Energy Solutions and was designed to offset 84% of the Plant’s electricity cost. Click the Solar Array Icon to view the current and lifetime production of the Array.
