BALTIMORE - Baltimore City Department of Public Works Director Rudolph S. Chow, P.E., today acknowledged the 75th Anniversary of the Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Plant in Wagner’s Point. “This facility, along with the Back River Plant, is vitally important in safeguarding public health and the water quality of the Chesapeake Bay,” said Director Chow. “Through investment in our facilities and sewer mains, and with the use of new technologies, we are not only protecting our waterways, but improving them.”

The idea for the Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Plant began in 1918, when 60.2 square miles was annexed to the City of Baltimore. This increase in the size of the City resulted in a section of South Baltimore being without sewage treatment facilities. By reason of the topography, the sewage from this section could not drain by gravity to the Eastern Avenue Pumping Station, or to the outfall sewer discharging at Back River Sewage Treatment Works.

In 1921 a survey was made of the available shore front property in the Brooklyn-Curtis Bay Area, suitable for a sewage treatment plant. Studies were also made of the water currents in the Patapsco River to determine the most desirable location to discharge the treatment plant effluent. A float, lighted by means of a storage battery, was used to make the current studies.

In 1923, a general survey was made of all the industries in the Brooklyn-Curtis Bay and Fairfield areas to determine the nature and the quantity of their sanitary and industrial wastes. After a careful review of all the factors involved, it was decided to purchase the present site of the Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Plant. The property, which had a land area of 29.04 acres, and a total area of 38.74 acres, was purchased in 1924 for $115,000.

There then followed a period of study and a determination to serve an ultimate population of 100,000. Construction began on June 14, 1937, and was completed on June 26, 1940, with the plant placed in service on November 12, 1940.

The original plant, modern for its time, was capable of only removing approximately one-third of the pollutants flowing through the plant, with the remaining two-thirds being discharged to the Patapsco River and out into the Chesapeake Bay. Major improvements in wastewater conveyance to the facility began in 1958, and in 1970 the overall planning and design criteria for the present plant began. Its ultimate goal was to not only provide additional capacity but to upgrade the effluent quality to meet more stringent water quality requirements for the inner and outer portions of the Patapsco River and the Chesapeake Bay.

The formal opening of the new facility on June 29, 1985, was the culmination of the efforts of many people over a long period of time, to provide protection to the waters of the State of Maryland. Today, construction is underway to provide additional facilities to further improve the discharged water quality by removing excess nutrients.

The Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Plant today is a secondary treatment facility with enhanced nutrient removal (ENR), chlorination and de-chlorination, situated on 69 acres on the Patapsco River at Wagner’s Point. It employs approximately 180 people whose job it is to treat wastewater generated from Baltimore City, as well as Baltimore, Howard, and Anne Arundel counties

The plant has grown from 5 million gallons per day (MGD) capacity in 1940, to its present day design flow of 73.0 MGD. The plant serves an area of approximately 184 square miles, and an estimated population of approximately 450,000. When the new Enhanced Nutrient Removal (ENR) expansion is completed, the design flow will increase to 81 MGD.

Wastewater treatment at Patapsco consists of grit removal, screening out large solid materials, settling out other solids, and removal of dissolved materials. These processes, and others, remove almost all of the pollutants that enter the treatment facility.