The Future of Wastewater Treatment Series: Indianapolis, Indiana

This article is part of our feature on the future of wastewater in the U.S.’s fastest growing metro areas. We’re using the Transcend Design Generator to automatically build, expand, or upgrade regional wastewater treatment systems in each of these regions.

Our next fastest growing metro series is known for race cars, pace cars, and Pacers.

As the United States experiences significant population growth in various regions, we’re examining the wastewater treatment needs of the fastest-growing counties and automatically designing new treatment infrastructure using the Transcend Design Generator! 

In this article, we will focus on Marion County, Indiana, home to the bustling city of Indianapolis, which ranks 81st on our list of fastest growing metro areas.

Indianapolis has two large plants, both expanded in the last decade to larger sizes, currently handling a significant capacity of both average and peak wastewater flows – in this case, 550 MGD. Even if we assume a 2.5 wet weather peak factor, it is still realistic to predict the current plants can handle the growth of the Indianapolis region for the foreseeable future, which is a really good thing!

However, because we are in the business of giving utilities and engineers a crystal ball, and since Indianapolis is a big sports town, it just makes more sense (and is more fun) to run a design for a new treatment plant assuming full capacity of both the Lucas Oil Stadium (~70k) and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (~250k+) at the same time. 

A 30 MGD plant would be enough to support these two buildings completely, so we’ve asked the TDG to design something that is very new for Indianapolis: an MBR wastewater plant, with a Primary Filter instead of clarifiers.

If you’d like to see the full design package for this treatment plant, send us a note at info@transcendinfra.com or contact us here and a member of our team will share it with you!

If you enjoyed this piece you may also want to read about the future of wastewater in Madison.