A safer, more modern way to treat Aberdeen’s drinking water is on the way.

The City Council on May 26 unanimously approved the award of a bid to $493,727.71 to Pease and Sons Inc. to construct a water treatment plant hypochlorination system to treat the city’s drinking water.

After the vote, Public Works Director Rick Sangder said, “We approved this in 2015, and then we had a series of like 26 landslides in that storm and that money was used to repair waterlines and system failures,” he said.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said Mayor Pete Schave. “It’s an important project we’ve wanted to get finished for a long time, so this is great news.”

Council President Dee Anne Shaw said it was in her first year as a council member when the conversion “was a high priority and we managed to get funding for it, got it shovel ready” before the 2015 rainstorm damaged the city’s water infrastructure and the project had to be shelved. “Now we’re actually doing it.”

Currently, and since it was built in 2000, the city’s membrane filtration water treatment plant that produces about 3 million gallons of drinking water per day uses chlorine gas to disinfect the filtered water, said City Engineer Kris Koski.

“The use of chlorine for disinfection is a standard process used in many water systems and ensures that the water meets strict water quality requirements,” said Koski. “There is a trend to move away from the use of chlorine gas due to the dangers that an accidental release might pose.”

Sangder said it was also becoming more difficult to acquire chlorine gas as most water treatment facilities are moving away from its use.

The city performed an alternative analysis in 2015 and identified sodium hypochlorite as a preferred alternative to chlorine gas.

“The sodium hypochlorite will be generated locally at the water treatment plant using salt and 0.8% sodium hypochlorite, which are both nonhazardous and do not have any special handling or transport restrictions,” said Koski. “The new disinfection system will be an asset to the city, and it will improve safety at the water treatment plant.”

Throughout the construction of the new disinfection system, Aberdeen’s drinking water will continue to be fully filtered and treated, and there will be no impact to water quality for customers, said Koski.