News

The City of San Leandro needed to replace their existing 80 year old waste water treatment plant to both comply with the new State Regulations and to upgrade their deteriorating facility to one with the latest equipment, materials and waste water treatment technologies.  Their plant discharges an average 5 million gallons of daily effluent directly into the San Francisco Bay and its effluent must therefore, be the cleanest possible.

The City's Water Pollution Control Division awarded the $40 million contract for the new plant designed by Carollo Engineering to Amoroso in August of 2011.   One of the key challenges to be faced by the City and Amoroso is keeping the existing plant on line until new portions of the plant can be placed into service.  Major components of the new plant include; new headworks with grit removal equipment, new influent pump stations, a new clarifier along with improvements to existing primary and secondary clarifiers, new fixed film reactor and bio filter odor facilities, new and improved equalization basins, improvements to the digesters, new and improved electrical equipment and a new set of controls for the entire plant.  This new plant will allow for an average daily treatment of 7 million gallons/day with peak capacity of 23 million gallons/day.

Also included is the construction of a new administration control building with civil, landscaping and yard facilities improvements over the entire footprint of the site.

A requirement of the Contract was that the successful bidder self performed a large portion of the work.   Amoroso crews are currently involved with the demo, excavation, F/R/P of the concrete work and will transition into some of the piping and equipment installation as well and framing and sheetrock.

Compounding the inherent difficulty of this project has been the insolvency of some major subcontractors as well as an extensive amount of contaminated soil and almost daily encountering of subsurface unforeseen obstacles.  As a result of the excellent communication and repertoire between our staff and the City's Plant Operators, the plant's operations have not been negatively affected by the new work and both parties look forward to continued success in this critical component of the Project.

The situation the City of San Leandro finds itself in is common to many cities throughout California and the rest of the nation.  Infrastructure deterioration, more stringent regulations and technological advances all will result in many similar opportunities for our industry.  Projects such as our San Leandro Water Pollution Control Plant will enhance our expertise and our plant resume- keeping us qualified and competitive in this promising sector of public works.

The success of any project starts and ends with the people involved.  "Hats off" to the staff of job 726 for their enormous efforts to date.