When most kids hear “wastewater,” they don’t think of fun.
But at South Platte Renew’s water festival on June 7, which is intended to be an annual event, families got to experience the fascinating, science-driven, and yes — even fun — world of water and natural resource renewal.
South Platte Renew is the third largest water renewal facility in Colorado, cleaning nearly 20 million gallons of wastewater each day. Co-owned by the cities of Englewood and Littleton, it cleans wastewater from 300,000 residents in these cities and other communities, according to its website.
In addition to wastewater, the plant cleans and renews naturals gases and solids, giving many forms of waste new uses in the environment.
“Really what we’re trying to do here is change the perception of wastewater,” said Kacie Allard, deputy director of business services. “We’re more than just a sewage plant. We renew resources, we capture gas, we bring our biosolids and land-apply them to (farms) for agricultural use.”
At the festival, kids could build models of the river table, put pipes together to watch how water travels and do science experiments.
Tours were also available for families to see the plant and learn about the many scientific processes that happen day-to-day.
“It’s a really big facility and just getting an understanding of the entire process is really — it’s awesome,” Allard said.
When South Platte Renew cleans wastewater, the water is returned to the South Platte River, where it can be used downstream for recreational use, agricultural use or drinking water, Allard said.
“The water that we put back into the river … at certain times, makes up 60% of the flow of the South Platte River, so it’s really substantial,” she said.
The wastewater cleaning process creates methane gas as a byproduct, marketing specialist Erin Bartlett said. Whereas most wastewater facilities burn off methane, which pollutes the environment, South Platte Renew instead cleans the gas and injects it into Xcel natural gas pipelines for reuse.
Biosolids are also cleaned to create fertilizers for farms in eastern Colorado.
“So everything that comes in that people consider a waste, we renew for reuse,” Bartlett said.
Highlands Ranch father David Tuchalski said he brought his 5-year-old daughter, Grace, to the event so she could learn more about where water comes from and how it’s cleaned.
“Just the festival atmosphere and getting to tour a plant and see how the water reaches our homes is important,” he said.
On the way there, Grace told her father she thought it would be boring. But as she got her hands dirty at the river table station, Tuchalski said she was already having a great time.
Partner organizations and departments including Englewood Public Works, South Suburban Parks and Recreation District, Red Rocks Community College, Emily Griffith Technical College, the Barr Milton Watershed Association and Denver Wastewater Management also had booths at the event.