Withlacoochee Pollution Control Plant celebrates new lab facility opening with ribbon cutting ceremony
Published 4:15 pm Tuesday, March 5, 2024
- Assistant Director of Utilities Jason Barnes thanks guests and contributors of the new lab facility at the WPCP ribbon cutting ceremony.
VALDOSTA — On Tuesday the Withlacoochee Pollution Control Plant (WPCP) celebrated the opening of its new lab facility that modernizes and enhances the city’s wastewater treatment capabilities.
According to the press release from the City of Valdosta, the WPCP was originally established in 1980 and has been a vital part of Valdosta’s infrastructure. The WPCP has served the community with state-of-the-art wastewater treatment capabilities for over four decades.
However, challenges caused by the flooding of the Withlacoochee River necessitated the construction of a new facility at a higher elevation.
“The lab officially started years and years ago at Mud Creek, and we wanted to have a combined lab of wastewater,” said Assistant Director of Utilities Jason Barnes. “[This facility] will be able to do more testing analysis on the samples; they had to go all the way to the Mud Creek before.
“They can pull samples here, they can come here as a localized lab facility, and be able to do all their tests in here at one location,” he said.
Barnes said this will result in quicker results, which will help them to ensure they meet the standards and specs of wastewater infrastructure.
The new lab facility is still being set up, but in the future the lab will have a microbiological station, work stations and a heat hood for sterilization, and a deionized water system.
Environmental Manager Joseph Gangler says that once the lab is fully set-up, test results of samples will able to be uploaded instantly.
“We’re trying to get into a more digital world where instead of having to do all the calculations on a calculator. … We wanna get it where we can put the data in and everyone can have it right there,” said Gangler.
“My goal is within five years I want the lab and our environmental department to be bullet proof,” said Gangler. “I want them to be the standard in which everybody else builds their programs.”
