When some Greene County residents turn on their faucet, they may notice the water flowing out of the faucet is softer.
The county’s sanitary engineering department just completed a new $49 million addition to its Northwest Regional Water Plant. The plant provides water services to 23,000 customers.
The upgrade now generates softer water through reverse osmosis technology. Director Mark Chandler stresses no chemicals or sodium are used.
"It uses a nanofiltration membrane. The pore sizes of the membrane is actually smaller than most of our compounds that we're pushing through that's in the raw water," Chandler said. "So the reverse osmosis is a process that by a pump, the water is actually forced through the membrane. And then that's what we blend together with filtered water. We set the desired hardness and then it's distributed back out."
The county’s water comes from a limestone aquifer, making it very hard, at 27 grains per gallon. Chandler says reverse osmosis has dropped it to 8 grains per gallon.
"It's going to eliminate the calcium in the scaling build up that does quickly degrade household appliances," said Chandler. "That's where the savings long term will come in for the customers."
Chandler says the upgrade also increased the plant’s flow capacity from nine and a half million gallons per day to 12 million gallons per day. It’s also equipped to deal with unregulated contaminants that may be in the raw water.
Xenia, Fairborn, Jamestown and Bellbrook do not have access to this softer water because they have separate public water systems. Also, those using well water do not have access to the softer water.
