The final stop for wastewater from the rancheria on Singley Road outside Loleta will soon be just a new beginning.

The Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria showed off its new, nearly complete wastewater treatment plant Wednesday. The state-of-the-art plant will handle wastewater from the tribe's new casino, as well as about 23 households that are set to abandon their septic systems.

The wastewater plant should virtually eliminate odors common to many facilities, and reuse the water processed in it.

"This is cutting edge," said Jimmy Alvarez. "This is new stuff."

Alvarez is the director of Plumas Consulting Inc. out of Mesa, Ariz. The American Indian business has built facilities for tribes all over Indian country.

Alvarez said the plant -- which cost between $1.5 million and $2 million -- is the smallest, but most advanced he's built to date. It will treat an average of 13,000 gallons per day, with a peak of 20,000 gallons per day.

When it's completed, wastewater will drop to surge tanks and a lift station, where it will be pumped into the headworks, where it will be pretreated and solids are removed. Then it will head to a sequencing batch reactor, where cultured bacteria eat up remaining solids. Filtration will be done in self-cleaning sand filters, and the water will then be treated with ultraviolet light.
"This plant uses zero chemicals," Alvarez said.

The treated effluent will then be pumped into a 200,000-gallon storage tank, where most is reserved for fire fighting, and the rest for flushing, landscaping and ground injection through an advanced leech field.

The odorous emissions will be sent through a large, carbon filter, where the odors are scrubbed out and removed.

The whole project took seven months and is scheduled to be complete in August, when the casino opens.