Aquifer Restoration & Wastewater Project Virtual Tour

An operator transfers water that has been extracted from the re-injection well to a tanker.  Water plant operators at the AWWT will later treat this water (6261-604).

The Great Miami Aquifer is located beneath the Fernald site. A small portion of this aquifer was contaminated during the site’s production years. The remediation of the aquifer by DOE involves 18 extraction wells pumping 1.8 billion gallons per year and five reinjection wells reinjecting treated water at a rate of 1,000 gallons per minute or approximately 500 million gallons per year. This reinjection technology which flush uranium contamination to the extraction wells will reduce the remediation time of the aquifer from 27 years to 10 years while meeting the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) health-protective concentration limits. The Advance Wastewater Treatment (AWWT) facility is a major component to the extensive system that has been built to extract, move, hold, treat and discharge or reinject treated water. Built in 1995 by DOE, the AWWT facility has an overall wastewater treatment design capacity of 2,900 gallons per minute.