Montevina WTP Improvements

The Montevina WTP is San Jose Water Company’s (SJWC) largest surface water treatment facility with a capacity of 30 MGD. SJWC performed a progressive design-build expansion project. As a dedicated partner, GSE was responsible for detailed design assistance, furnishing, and installing the structural, mechanical, and underground utilities for the expansion and rehabilitation of the WTP facility while ensuring it always remained operational. The WTP had struggled for years to treat the high turbidity water during winter storms. With the new membrane and ultrafiltration fiber technology, the plant now treats water up to 500 nephelometric turbidity units regularly. The WTP was the first, and the nation’s largest, installation of this kind of technology. GSE’s scope included demolition of an existing media filtration plant and construction of a new membrane filtration facility, including flocculation settling basins, ultra-filtration (UF) skids, recovery reverse osmosis, CIP systems, chemical feed, and new laboratory and administrative buildings. GSE’s responsibilities also included constructing a new solids dewatering facility remotely consisting of two 40-foot-diameter gravity thickeners, sludge pumping station, FKC screw press, sludge conveyors, chemical feed system, and associated site improvements. Innovation solutions included a new plant exit to improve safety, repurposing existing concreted structures using screws press technology to reduce solids disposal traffic in the nearby residential neighborhood, and conducting partnering and technical workshops which resulted in a highly collaborative environment.

This project received the 2019 DBIA National Merit Award.