Glen Riddle WTP & WWTP

Glen Riddle is a 995-acre planned unit development (PUD) situated on the Herring and Turville Creeks in Worcester County, Maryland.  The Farm is the former training grounds of the Triple Crown racehorse, Man-O-War.  GMB provided engineering services to Centex Homes for the water and wastewater treatment facility involving reclaimed water reuse to serve a 650-unit residential subdivision.  The community also includes a marina, a community center, and two 18-hole golf courses located in Berlin, Maryland.

The Glen Riddle Water Treatment Plant is a 0.45 MGD drinking water production facility.  The source is groundwater with a moderately high level of iron.  Treatment for iron removal is accomplished with three parallel package treatment systems that make use of conventional treatment technologies while still keeping a compact footprint.  Disinfected water is pumped out of the facility to the community.  A 400,000-gallon elevated storage tank was also constructed adjacent to the plant for storage.  A high degree of automation is built into the plant control system, minimizing the need for operator attention.  Additionally, a SCADA system with radio connection makes control and monitoring possible from a remote, centrally located facility.  Aesthetics were important in building design and care was taken to keep the appearance of an agriculture setting to the extent possible.

GMB also designed the 0.20 mgd wastewater reclamation plant, which employs a membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology, also known as the ZenoGem process.  The MBR process consists of a suspended growth oxic-anoxic biological reactor integrated with a hollow fiber ultrafiltration membrane system.  The membranes are immersed in the biological reactor and permeate pumps are used to draw a vacuum on the membranes, thereby extracting clear water through the membrane.  The ultrafiltration membranes serve to replace the solids separation function of secondary clarifiers and sand filters. Sugar is added as a carbon source to achieve complete denitrification in the reactor, prior to filtration.  The filtered effluent is chlorinated and pumped to a 30 mg holding pond prior to reuse as irrigation water.   The small footprint of the process allowed for the entire wastewater facility, including the laboratory, to be constructed in a single barn-type building.

SCADA controls were incorporated into the project allowing Worcester County to remotely monitor the plant’s operations from its offices located in Ocean Pines.

Because of the reduced footprint afforded by the elimination of clarifiers and filters, the treatment process is entirely housed and concealed in a barn structure.  The architectural design of the facilities incorporated farm-like barn features, a storage silo, and a greenhouse structure in order to blend with the character of the existing Riddle Farm property, formerly the training grounds for the famous racehorses, Man-O-War and War Admiral.   An 11-acre lagoon was provided for storage of reclaimed water prior to irrigation onto the golf courses.

GMB provided process, civil, architectural, and structural design of the WTP and WWTP in a design-build effort with the general contractor and the electrical contractor.