The City of Pooler and their engineer, Hussey, Gay, Bell & DeYoung were interested in building a new mechanical wastewater treatment plant to replace their existing lagoon treatment system. The design flow for this new plant would be 2.5 MGD.

The challenge was to build a new plant on a strip of land that was located between the existing lagoons and the railroad tracks that defined the boundaries of the property. A conventional activated sludge plant that required aeration basins, clarifiers, and tertiary filters would take up too much land, so the engineer looked at an Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) plant design. They knew that an MBR did not need clarifiers or tertiary filters to meet the permit limits for the plant.

The City and their engineer put out an RFP to manufacturers for an evaluated life cycle cost analysis of the particular MBR design they would supply. Of the manufacturers that submitted a proposal, GE Water Technologies' proposal was determined to have the lowest life cycle cost and was selected for the design.

The overall plant design includes a primary screen, Fontaine gates, Schreiber grit removal, EQ basin, activated sludge process tanks, membrane tanks, aerobic digester, solids handling building and UV disinfection. Pooler was the first plant in the State of Georgia to incorporate the ZW 500D reinforced membranes and new cassette design.

The plant has been in operation for several years now and continues to perform well. It is important to note that the operators of the plant readily adapted to operating a mechanical plant from the previous lagoon design without any trouble. This is a tribute to the staff and to the ease of operating an MBR wastewater treatment plant.