Located on U.S Route 23 just north of Pickaway County, this plant was placed into service in 1967 to meet the needs of the growing service area. It has been modified, expanded, and improved many times.
Like Jackson Pike (JP), the Southerly plant features a conventional activated sludge process and follows all treatment requirements of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. Clean effluent is returned to the Scioto River (photo left).
The average daily design capacity of the Southerly WRP is 114 MGD and can treat up to 330 MGD through full treatment and an additional 110 MGD through a Chemically Enhanced Primary Treatment system (CEPT). In addition to flow from its service area, Southerly can also receive flow diverted from JP through a flow diversion system and the interconnector sewer (photo below).
Wastewater flow that reaches Southerly enters a set of mechanical coarse and fine screens before it is pumped to a vortex grit removal system. Next, flow is split between three trains: west, center, and east. Each train is nearly identical with the exception that west and center trains have rectangular primary clarifiers, and the east train has circular shaped primary clarifiers.
Biosolids are treated and stabilized through anaerobic digestion to Class B standards, which reduces pathogens, minimizes odor, and decreases volume. A portion of the solids are taken to the Compost Facility where they are composted to Class A, exceptional quality standards and marketed to the public and other outlets as Com-Til mulch.
Like Jackson Pike, the Southerly plant is implementing an electrical cogeneration facility that will use methane gas to fuel boilers for process and building heat, and generate electricity for plant use.