Water Sector News

POCATELLO, Idaho (KIFI/KIDK) - Did you know that 7 million gallons of treated water go into the Portneuf River every day?

Multiple city departments are involved in keeping our water clean and our rivers safe. That includes the city water department, the department of environmental quality and water treatment facilities.

Elementary school students gathered at the Pocatello Water Department to learn about our water system on Tuesday.

“The primary objective of Water Week is that it’s an opportunity to invite the school district. We have third graders from the Pocatello school district come out and we give them a specific presentation catered towards them,” Levi Lusk, an educator and data technician for the Pocatello Water Department, said. “We have a representative from each of those departments from the city to talk about their individual department and how they serve the community.”

The Pocatello Water Pollution Control Plant is among the few departments that are seldom recognized.

“Anything that goes down the drains in the city of Pocatello or the city of Chubbuck is then conveyed out to the wastewater treatment plant,” Levi Adams, the superintendent for the Water Pollution Control Plant, said.

Millions of gallons of wastewater are filtered every day, and the process is not easy.

“It’s a multistep process," Adams said. "There’s screening at the beginning, there are some settling tanks and then it moves into what we call the secondary part of the plant.”