Airmen keep Kirkuk water cycle running

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Ken Sloat
  • 506th Air Expeditionary Group Public Affairs
KIRKUK AIR BASE, Iraq (AFPN) --  When the faucet comes on and water begins swirling in the sink and into the drain, it is actually beginning a never-ending journey.

The water used by troops here and at Forward Operating Base Warrior circles in a never ending loop that, without the oversight of several guardsmen, might not go so smoothly.

“We treat more than 100,000 gallons of waste water each day,” said Master Sgt, Bruce Larrabee, senior operator in charge of waste water treatment for the 506th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron here.

The sergeant deployed from Pease Air National Guard Base, N.H. He also works for the Air Force at New Boston Air Force Base, N.H., as a waste water treatment specialist.

All the water used on the base eventually ends up at this treatment facility, Sergeant Larrabee said. It arrives by truck from holding tanks or is piped directly to the facility.

“This is a fairly common set up,” Sergeant Larrabee said. “Pumps are used to bring it to a higher place and gravity moves it from there.”

The sergeant said the base uses the activated sludge process to treat waste water.

This is a biological waste treatment system that uses the oxygen in compressed air to encourage the growth -- and more importantly the feeding -- of microorganisms already found in the waste water. As the bacteria and other microorganisms live and reproduce, they feed on the waste matter in the water. As they eat it -- and each other -- they either turn it into gas or make it big enough to settle to the bottom.

If nourished properly, some of the bugs will reproduce every 20 minutes. Others may reproduce every 20 seconds, Sergeant Larrabee said. In just one of several 11,000-gallon tanks used for waste water treatment, there may be as many as a trillion “bugs,” he said.

“This is a living, breathing organism,” he said. “Some organisms just aren’t as pretty as others.”

When the mixture enters the final tank, all motion is stopped so the mixture can settle. As clear, treated water floods out at the top of the tank, the “sludge”
at the bottom is put back through the process or pumped out for disposal.

The actual amount of sludge produced from treating 100,000 gallons equal to just six percent of the total, Sergeant Larrabee said. That means about 96 percent of the treated water returns to the water table.

The entire process can take as much as 12 hours, Sergeant Larrabee said.

In most of the United States, the nearly clear water produced by this process is often pumped directly into a nearby river or stream to be reabsorbed into the environment. At Kirkuk, it’s returned to the water table.

A water table can be layers of subterranean water, like hidden lakes, or water suspended in material like sand or gravel. He said it is unclear what type of water table is underneath Kirkuk. But it is the source of much of the base’s non-potable water, the sergeant said.

That non-potable water, pumped from wells, is in high demand for everything except drinking.

“We don’t drink it because we don’t treat it to drink,” Sergeant Larrabee said. “We could (drink it), but we don’t.”

Master Sgt. Phillip Kolata, a guardsman deployed to the squadron from West Virginia, said, “We use a system very much like many towns and cities in the United States. We pump it from wells at night or when usage is low and store it for later use.

“Those (tanks) are our version of the water towers many towns have,” he said.

Senior Airman Randy Plantenberg, a utilities craftsman said, “We’ve taken as much as 180,000 gallons in one day from that well.”

The Airman, a guardsman from Ohio, said that was a record was set during an Army rotation when the population of Forward Operating Base Warrior nearly doubled.

The average daily usage is more like 100,000 gallons per day, Airman Plantenberg said.
The civil engineers run the pumps that fill the tanks and water bladders twice a day to keep them full.

Although the engineers test and treat the well water with chlorine, it is still non-potable, said Staff Sgt. Chad Jennings, a utilities craftsman from the Alaska Guard.

From bladders and large storage tanks, water is pumped to smaller storage tanks spread out around the base.

The engineers -- besides pulling water from the ground to keep bladders and tanks full -- make sure pumps pushing water to the rest of the base never stop.

The Airmen must fix a pump or a power failure quickly, day or night.

“When the power goes out we usually wait about two minutes. If it doesn’t come back on we start the generator,” Airman Plantenberg said. He said most people do not even notice the gap in pumping.

Sergeant Jennings said the team usually has about five minutes if the pumps fail before the phones start ringing. But the sergeant said the team is so used to hearing the pump at night that if something happens to make them stop the silence usually wakes them up.

The pumps have a pressure-regulating valve that puts water out at a constant rate. If the system doesn’t need the water, it just circulates the water through the pipes, Sergeant Jennings said.

So as soon as someone turns on a faucet somewhere, and the tank that supports it needs water, the flow starts again.

Kirkuk uses a lot of water. But the need to conserve water at Kirkuk is more about treating it once it is used, than having enough of it, Sergeant Larrabee said.

“Everything we pull out of the ground is going to make its way back here as waste water” for treatment, he said.

Sergeant Larrabee said waste water treatment plants in the United States cannot operate at more than 80 percent of their capacity for more than 30 days in a row without permission from their state environmental protection agency.

That’s not the case at Kirkik.

“We are at 100 percent (of capacity) every hour of every day that we are operating,” he said.