Gainesville Regional Utilities’ (GRU) Main Street Water Reclamation Facility will start construction on a $50 million Phase 1 project in April that will prepare for a potential $110 million Phase 2 project in the future.  

The construction should last until the middle of 2026, and grant funding will cover $22.5 million of the cost. The GRU Authority will discuss the projects at its Wednesday meeting. 

The Main Street facility, opened in the 1920s, served as Gainesville’s only wastewater treatment facility until the Kanapaha Water Reclamation Facility came online in the early 1970s.  

Rachel Lockhart, director of GRU’s water and wastewater treatment operations, said the Main Street facility services the more historic neighborhoods in Gainesville. While not a perfect dividing line, she said US 441 splits the services territories, with the Kanapaha facility handling everything west and the Main Street facility handling everything east.  

Lockhart said the most recent significant upgrades at the Main Street facility happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She said the phase 1 project will deal with some of the most corrosive areas of the wastewater system that lie close to the facility. 

“We have various different ages of processes in service,” Lockhart said. “We have some from the late 60s, early 70s, some from the mid-70s, from the late 80s, early 90s.”   

Besides being highly corrosive, the area near the facility is also a critical portion of the system where everything enters the reclamation plant for treatment. Lockhart said there are five pipes that enter the facility, two powered only by gravity and three force mains.  

Phase 1 will replace essential wastewater pipes that flow into the facility and construct a brand-new master lift station and headworks. The improvements will also increase treatment capacity from 7.5 million gallons per day to 10 million gallons. 

The inflow pipes that GRU will replace run under SE 13th Road, next to Five Star Pizza and G.T. Motorcars. GRU will shut down the road to install new PVC pipes that should last for up to 100 years, Lockhart said.  

In other portions of the system with old pipes, GRU uses a cast-in-place method, but Lockhart said the utility wants to ensure reliance near the facility and replace the piping. 

“We like to try to set people up well for the future,” Lockhart said. “I don’t want my successors cursing my name.”   

During construction, the utility will use temporary piping that runs along the ground and connects to the system. Lockhart said the utility will need someone at the facility day and night in case of a problem.  

She said if an issue happened with the temporary pipe, staff would need to act immediately, with no time to drive from home. 

“That is one of the harder things about working in the water and wastewater environments,” Lockhart said. “No shutdowns, no outages, no nothing. Wastewater will come, and wastewater will get treated.” 

The new wastewater pipe will join the other four inflows and enter the new master lift station. The lift station will be 18 feet deep and rated for a peak of 24 million gallons and will pump the wastewater to a newly constructed headworks.  

The headworks will be elevated 14 feet above the ground, meaning the lift station needs to pump 32 feet straight up.  

Those three projects will finish Phase 1 and prepare for additional capacity and an upgraded treatment process as part of Phase 2.  

The funding for Phase 2 has yet to be secured. Both Phase 1 and 2 of the project are included in GRU’s Capital Improvement Plan, Lockhart said, and received approval for the $50 million for the first part from the Gainesville City Commission before the authority took control in October 2023. 

With Phase 2, Lockhart said the facility wants to move to a more modern treatment process called membrane bioreactor technology. The process uses gravity to push the water through, requiring the elevated headworks, and gives some space benefits.  

“We’re pretty boxed in,” Lockhart said of the Main Street facility. “So, we have to use our space really wisely. In order to meet future regulatory regulations with additional treatment processes, we have to be really space/cost effective.”   

She said the new system will give the facility elbow room for any future regulations that come. 

Gravity powers a lot of the wastewater system that flows into the Main Street facility, Lockhart said. Using gravity means saving on energy costs but also causes the Main Street facility to run into interesting debris. 

Instead of larger debris getting ground up in pump stations, it flows into the facility still whole. 

“We are exposed to whatever gets put in a toilet or a manhole without any pumping or grinding,” Lockhart said. “So that’s a little bit unique about us here at Main Street versus our Kanapaha facility.”   

At the new headworks, the wastewater will go through an improved screening process that removes bulk debris for the landfill. Then, the wastewater will enter a grit collection system followed by odor control before entering the rest of the plant.  

Lockhart said Phase 2, if approved, will come a year or two after Phase 1 finishes in 2026. 

While costly, Lockhart said the Main Street facility needs the upgrades as it deals with increased density and usage in the city, the corrosive impacts of wastewater and new regulations and treatment.