North Las Vegas, Water Reclamation Facility
With a rapidly growing population and increased land area usage, the City of North Las Vegas needed to construct a new wastewater treatment plant. Key members of Burns’ environmental structures group provided structural engineering design services for an influent pump station, an elevated grit removal structure, a three-story containment building, a solids handling facility, and odor control facilities. The selection of a new site halfway through the design required the design team to start over within the parameters of the original project schedule, leaving only five months to complete the design.
Project features and unique items included:
- Structural design to Seismic Design Category C Requirements
- Concrete design performed to requirements of ACI 350, Code Requirements for Environmental Concrete Structures
- Designed 155 ft. long headworks consisting of coarse screen channels and a 50 foot deep self-cleaning influent pump station
- Three-story containment building with numerous setbacks and multiple structural systems including structural steel floor framing, composite metal deck, steel floor grating, load-bearing masonry with large openings, concentrically braced steel frames and specially reinforced masonry shear walls
- A 19,000 square foot solids handling building with heavy industrial components including a truck bay with cake hoppers and surrounding access walkways, bridge crane, water holding tank, large diameter odor control ducts on building roof, trenches for piping and numerous pads for chemical tanks, pumps, belt thickeners and miscellaneous equipment
- Designed tall, slender odor control duct supports while maintaining tight deflection limits for gravity and lateral loads
- Isolated foundation design for centrifuges with high vibration loads
- Development of chemical resistive coating specification to protect structures from the effects of hydrogen sulfide gas
