The Southern Delivery System (SDS) has broken ground on a $125 million facility to treat the “raw” water that will be pumped from the Pueblo Reservoir to Colorado Springs. The SDS water treatment plant, which is being built on 124 acres east of Marksheffel Road between U.S. 24 and Colorado Highway 94, will consist of seven buildings, water storage tanks, drying beds, lagoons, pump stations and a drainage pond. It will be able to treat 50 million gallons of water per day.
SDS is expected to be operational in early 2016, and it could take nearly that long to complete the water treatment plant. The 82,000 square-foot water treatment plant will use ozone biological filtration to treat water piped from the Pueblo Reservoir. The plant’s capacity can be expanded to treat up to 130 million gallons of water per day based on future demand.
Ozone biolfiltration is an effective method for removing naturally occurring organic materials from water. It has been used extensively in the US for various surface water sources.