Providing Reliable, Long-Term Drinking Water Solutions 

Hastings Utilities faced a difficult decision to provide a reliable, long-term drinking water source for the community. The wells in the city were seeing high levels of nitrate and uranium. A traditional solution — constructing a full-scale water treatment plant — would cost more than $100 million and severely impact community utility rates. 

Along with innovative management strategies, alternative solutions were needed to meet current and future demands and provide clean drinking water. The Aquifer Storage and Recovery Program is a complex, innovative and developing technology, requiring careful design and implementation to achieve desired results. 

In the case of Hastings Utilities, the program treats highly concentrated nitrate water and injects it back into the aquifer upstream to create a water bubble with a lower nitrate concentration. This clean water bubble is projected to move downstream to the city’s drinking water wells, providing a clean drinking water source. 

Aquifer storage and recovery is a subsurface storage technology, and is more resilient and protected than alternative and traditional storage technologies. The stored water is protected from evaporation, pollutants and extreme weather. Appropriate site selection and aquifer availability are key to an aquifer storage and recovery project. The team used advanced hydrogeologic assessment techniques to select the site and water storage zones in the aquifer. 

The project, under budget and delivered on time, provided a long-term, sustainable and cost-effective solution to the community’s drinking water needs.