By Kerry Lyman
During presentations at last week’s city council meeting, it became clear the city will need to spend tens of millions of dollars to upgrade the city’s wastewater and water treatment plants to accommodate future growth and the introduction of surface water from the Truckee Canal into the city’s current groundwater only water supply.
Separate consultants estimated in coming years the city will need to spend about $27 million on upgrades to the water treatment plant and between $22.7 million and $38.3 million on the wastewater treatment plant to meet the city’s growth goals and the use of surface water to help meet those goals. The consultants said grant money could be available to help cover some of those costs.
WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANT UPGRADES
All the upgrades and improvements to the wastewater treatment plant, planned in two phases, would support a city population of about 65,000 residents, according to Christine Brandon, executive director of the Western Nevada Development District.
Nitrates, nitrogen-based compounds that are found in fertilizers, liquid waste and manure, which are often found in water due to agricultural runoff and decaying organic matter, are of particular concern for Fernley’s water treatment plant, according to Jonathan Lesperance, an engineer with Lumos and Associates, which prepared the preliminary engineering report on the city’s water treatment plant.
The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection (NDEP) had issued an Administrative Order of Consent (AOC) to the city due to elevated nitrogen levels in monitoring wells surrounding Fernley’s wastewater treatment plant, which may indicate the plant “may be contributing to degradation of the ground water,” Lesperance said.
That AOC has since been lifted due to reduced nitrogen levels in later testing of wells, and although NDEP is not requiring a nitrogen limit in its 2025 wastewater discharge permit issued to the city, it is likely to be required in the future because NDEP “told us that was coming,” Lesperance said.
Currently, the city’s water treatment plant is not capable of reducing nitrogen, he added.
Another concern is the reuse of effluent, which is the water that leaves the treatment plant. Right now, effluent leaving the treatment plant is designated as class C, which restricts human contact, and is directed to the Fernley Wildlife Management Area, according to Lesperance.
The NDEP will not require the city to upgrade the quality of the effluent leaving the wastewater plant unless the city wants to change the use of that water, Lesperance said. However, Brandon said her organization wants the city to produce effluent designated as A+, which meets drinking water standards but requires advanced treatment, or A, which may be used for irrigation.
Brandon said this level of effluent is necessary “because it creates a revenue stream for the city to sell that water to industrial users. You don’t want it to go out to the wetlands anymore. You’re losing money doing that,” she said.
Fernley’s wastewater treatment plant currently uses a chlorine solution, like a bleach, to treat effluent. But it would be less expensive to treat the water with salt, which would also provide long-term reliability, so Lumos & Associates is recommending the use of an on-site sodium hypochlorite generating system, combined with a sequential batch reactor to address the issues outlined, Lesperance said.
Odor arising from the wastewater plant was a concern to Councilman Ryan Hanan, who said he gets a lot of odor complaints from nearby residents.
“The generation of odors is impossible to escape, but a higher efficiency treatment process like the recommended alternative would certainly improve the situation over your current pond system,” Lesperance said.
The treatment plant now treats about 1.5 million gallons of sewage a day and is capable of treating 3 million gallons a day, so the plant is currently at about half its capacity, according to Lesperance. But Brandon disagreed. Although the plant is permitted for processing up to 3 million gallons a day, “you can’t actually run the plant at 3 million gallons a day because of sand and nitrate issues,” she said.
However, the first phase of the two-phase project “would get us up to 3 million gallons a day,” which would support a population of about 45,000 residents. Phase 2 of the project would allow the plant to treat about 4.4 million gallons a day, which should support a population of about 65,000 residents, Brandon said.
The council voted unanimously to proceed with the design, planning and prioritization of the recommended Phase 1 improvements to the wastewater treatment plant next year, in 2026, at a projected cost of about $10.3 million. Phase 2 improvements, anticipated to be needed by 2031, are expected to cost approximately $17.1 million.
WATER TREATMENT PLANT UPGRADES
Fernley’s water treatment plant was designed for groundwater treatment. But adding surface water from the Truckee Canal adds new challenges because the quality and chemistry of groundwater and surface water are different, according to Conan Monson of CDM Smith, the consultant firm hired to evaluate the city’s current water treatment and propose facility improvements.
Taking surface water from the canal would require a new intake structure and a turbidimeter to monitor the turbidity of the canal, as well as a shut off valve to shut off that surface water source if the water is too turbid. That’s because turbid water is difficult and expensive to treat, Monson said.
The existing piping and pump at the treatment plant may be used for surface water intake if the valves are reconfigured to accommodate small flows of water, or a new, smaller pump may be used because you want to bring the surface water flow online in small increments, he said.
A tie-in would need to be added at the treatment plant so surface water and ground water could be treated separately or blended. CDM also recommends the addition of three drying beds because surface water adds solids as a waste product of treatment. The city currently stores water treatment solids in tanks that are hauled off in a fairly wet condition, which can be expensive, Monson said.
Surface water also tends to have organic compounds that can cause taste and odor concerns, which can be alleviated by adding granular activated carbon pressure vessels, called GAC pressure vessels. CDM is not recommending such vessels at this time but will continue to monitor and sample canal water to determine if they would be needed, Monson said.
Monson also said the treatment plant will need some Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) upgrades, where information from all the water treatment plant’s analyzers and instruments go through a central control system and helps operators make adjustments to the treatment process, he said.
PFAs, or polyfluoroalkyl substances, which are long-lasting chemicals that break down slowly over time, also may be a concern since three of Fernley’s monitoring wells have PFA levels slightly above the 4 parts per trillion recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Monson said.
The EPA compliance deadline for treatment of PFAs has been extended from 2029 to 2031, so that gives the city some time to comply. It’s possible that PFAs could be treated by the same equipment to deal with taste and odor concerns, or it may need to be dealt with separately, he said.
Monson proposed that the city continue sampling canal water to determine if a GAC system is necessary to deal with taste and odor; conduct a SCADA study to determine what specific SCADA upgrades may be necessary; work with regulators to determine if PFA treatment and removal is necessary; and define the project and proceed into design and construction of the needed improvements.
In a unanimous vote, the council approved moving forward with planning and design of the improvements as outlined in the CDM June 2025 preliminary engineering report with a total project cost of $40 million, also approving the use of $4 million to carry out the design phase of the project.
FUNDING
Brandon said her organization supports the city in exploring grant opportunities for both the water and wastewater treatment plant upgrades. She said they would look at funding the wastewater treatment plant design with the Economic Development Administration and would look to the EPA for water treatment.
“We’ll also look at state funds through the state’s revolving loan fund for both water and wastewater treatment.” But first, federal assistance will be sought because the EPA has an 80/20 match program, whereby the federal government provides 80 percent of the funds and the local entity provides 20 percent, Brandon said.
The EPA usually funds water treatment projects because it is the EPA’s regulations and mandates that require compliance to those standards, she said.
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