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Transcript: Great Lakes Drinking Water Needs

At Siemens Water Technologies, we’re developing answers for some of the world’s most pressing water challenges.  Limited availability, deteriorating quality, and protecting sensitive water sheds from contamination.  Siemens delivers completely integrated solutions, services and innovative technologies, designed to help communities and industries conserve, protect and manage the world’s limited water resources today…and tomorrow.

The Great Lakes may be our most precious of natural resources, and holds 20 percent of the world’s fresh water.  For over 75 years, Siemens Water Technologies has provided solutions that have safely maintained and sustained the water needs around the Great Lakes, for population growth and economic development.

Since 1997, Siemens Memcor membrane systems have provided 35 Great Lakes water treatment plants the next generation of proven technologies to keep up with the ever growing demand for safe, high quality and low cost water.  In the mid 1990s in Kenosha, WI, there was a need to expand their water treatment plant to keep up with population growth.  There was also a growing concern about the quality of Lake Michigan water.

-David Lewis, Kenosha Water Utility
“In the 1990s, there were some issues on Lake Michigan with parasites getting into water supplies, and the Kenosha Water Utility felt the need to look at newer technologies to see what we could do to upgrade, especially our old sand filter plant – the one that was built in the early 1900s”.

-Russ Davis, Technical Sales Manager, Memcor
“Great Lakes Water and Siemens Memcor technology are very compatible with each other because the low organic content in the raw water is such that we can filter the water and without having to treat for organic removal, and make long too, surface water treatment with quality water, which is a direct filtration process”.

-David Lewis, Kenosha Water Utility
“The major benefits of using the Memcor membrane system for our constituents and our customers is the lower cost of building the plant, and secondly, and probably even more importantly, is the phenomenal quality of the water that comes through our membrane system.  With the membrane plant, there are no chemicals added up front, we don’t use a coagulant.  The water comes through the front strainers, goes into the membrane system, is filtered within seconds of when it enters our facility.  Membrane systems provide all the tools you need to make a high quality water for your customers at a very affordable price”.

In Lake Charter Township, near Bridgman, Michigan, a new Memcor membrane system has been online for little more than a year, and plant operators really like the way it can handle the variable water conditions of Lake Michigan.

-Stewart Beach, Lake Township, Michigan Water Superintendent
“The Memcor membranes handle the excess turbidity.  Such things as coagulation, flocculations, are not needed for the membranes.  This was one of the big reasons that we got the membranes, was to handle that extra demand and also eliminate some of the costs.  There’s less hands-on with the system, which enables more of a sense of confidence in the operators when they’re dealing with problems in the system – difficult conditions, temperature extremes, rain, thunderstorms, those kind of things.  Its been more reliable.  And reliable, not just mechanically or electrically but more reliable in the quality of the water produced.  You’re not adding a whole bunch of treatment chemicals for a membrane.  You’re adding one chemical.  You’re adding just chlorine and that’s it”.

-Russ Davis, Technical Sales Manager, Memcor
“Siemens Memcor technology has evolved probably more than any other membrane company in the industry in the last ten years.  We’ve gone from making polypropelyne membranes, which were not ….. resistant, very good product.  What we’re making today is much better, with our pdf membrane, our low pressure configuration.  This plant is a plant that 5 years ago, 6 years ago, might not have been economical to build.  Today, it was very economical to build”.

-David Lewis, Kenosha Water Utility
“In the ten years that we’ve operated our plant, we’ve learned so much about microfiltration.  Its really been a growing experience and its truly been a team concept between our utility and Siemens, the people of Siemens Water Technologies.  We went from a very simple technology in rapid sand filtration to a very high-tech technology in microfiltration.  Siemens helped us throughout that process, they brought in process engineers, people that were knowledgeable of the membrane system itself and worked with us to bring our staff up to speed, which was imperative at the startup of the plant”.

-Stewart Beach, Lake Township, Michigan Water Superintendent
“The number one builder of new technology that was keeping up with all the technology was Siemens and we knew that we would be able to get good, reliable service from Siemens.  They were a very large company, they weren’t somebody that was just local, they were somebody that was international.  We do have some of the cheapest water rates in the state of Michigan, and we want to maintain that low rate for our customers and future economic development as long as possible.  And we can do that with this membrane system”.

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