Prime Engineering, Inc. Atlanta Georgia

Hyatt Produces Zero Discharge
Luxury resort develops stepping stone for larger wastewater plants to be developed in similar manner

Hyatt Hotels' 1,000 acre resort property in Dorado, Puerto Rico is an expansive tropical paradise which includes an oceanfront hotel, multiple time-share developments, numerous world-class restaurants, four golf courses, three swimming pools, a world-famous river pool, and many other water features. The remote raw water well field and treatment facility and on-property wastewater treatment facilities are owned and operated by Hyatt. Expanding property development, rising occupancy, and impending discharge regulations combined with an already aging utility infrastructure led Hyatt to a necessary capital improvement crossroads. Like many wastewater treatment facilities around the Nation, the Hyatt Cerromar and Dorado Beach wastewater Treatment Plant was on its way to falling out of compliance with its operations permit.

Hyatt had established a relationship with Prime Engineering, Incorporated in 1990, having been Prime Engineering’s first client. Hyatt called upon Prime Engineering again in 1998, to assist in developing a "Zero Discharge" program for liquid and solid waste disposal. This program meets environmental and operating requirements while providing a substantial operational cost savings to Hyatt. However, unlike most plants, the direction of Prime Engineering’s expansion and rehabilitation design was not to make the plant’s discharge cleaner, but to eliminate it entirely by reusing all the benign byproducts of wastewater treatment on property.

Hyatt proactively approached the required capital improvement program with additional goals to address each of the following in a single capital initiative:

Consolidate two wastewater treatment plants to streamline operation costs
Expand waste treatment to meet property development and occupancy projections
Minimize off-site discharge of waste treatment plant effluent to avoid wasting critical water resources and to ensure environmental regulation compliance
Eliminate costly and disruptive off-site disposal of organic sludge by-product.
Create beneficial compost using landscape trimmings and yard waste
Regulate water levels and maximize dependability of an integrated nine-lake stormwater management and golf course irrigation system

The Zero Discharge approach, design and implementation implemented by Prime Engineering effectively eliminates off-site releases and costly disposal of waste utilizing the following major features, which also supply solutions for Hyatt’s additional goals:

Multiple Sewage Lift Stations - Sized for individual source peak flows- All stations are networked together in a single force main to the combined waste treatment facility
Central Flow Equalization/Surge Tank - Sized to handle peak and emergency flow conditions to eliminate treatment plant overrun and untreated discharges; this significantly reduces capital costs of downstream treatment systems.
Primary/Secondary Wastewater Treatment Plant - Discharges treated water to an isolated golf course effluent irrigation lake and produces an organic sludge by-product.
Golf Course Irrigation System - Treated wastewater is mixed with rainwater in an isolated effluent lake and applied to the golf course as irrigation. Baffles and backflow valves ensure the irrigation system supply is supplemented with additional surface waters and that effluent lake levels remain above an aesthetically pleasing threshold.
Compost Facility - Organic sludge by-product is mixed with chipped landscape waste and aerated to produce compost for use in landscaping and golf course maintenance.

In order to maintain profitability at the resort during construction, the wastewater treatment facility could not be shut down for any extended period of time. Being only 600 feet from the Atlantic Ocean, the topography is not conducive to a gravity driven treatment plant. An above ground equalization basin serves to help alleviate this problem, as well as other problems, including: operating as a holding tank for periods of plant maintenance, acting as a grit removal chamber, beginning aerobic digestion prior to introduction into the aeration basins, and as a stilling basin for removal of floatables.

Technologically, the plant was designed not to be run by computers or other advanced technological gadgetry, but by plant operators though a simply daily routine. In the beachfront environment, the human factor actually provides higher levels of reliability than machines that rust.

In addition to the design challenges faced, construction in the Caribbean is no laughing matter. Hurricanes, labor disputes, and a language barrier provided challenges that through cooperation and patience were overcome to the benefit of all.

The innovative use of complete re-use provides a stepping stone for larger plants to be designed in a similar manner. As more homes are built, the demand for irrigation water rises, and as experienced by many metropolitan areas, frequent droughts require bans on lawn watering during peak demand times for irrigation. The resulting brown grass depresses home values and therefore the economy, all the while the water that could be used for irrigation is pumped right back into a river. Water used for irrigation seeps into the earth and is filtered as it percolates back to the aquifer, replenishing the earth. The public around such a plant is happy to know that the possible pollution of their streams is eliminated and that they can water their grass and keep up their curb appeal. On the business front, this total reuse concept helps facility owners to avoid costly and time consuming EPA problems. Resort properties especially can benefit from this wastewater treatment process integrated into their infrastructure and grounds programs.