Environment | Greater New Haven | International Festival of Arts & Ideas
The Whitney Water Treatment Facility. Photos Kapp Singer.
Next to Edgerton Park, just over the Hamden town line, lives a big silver snake. It slinks in the grass, skin glimmering in the sunlight. And every day, it spits out a few million gallons of water.
That long, skinny tube clad in stainless steel is the Whitney Water Treatment Facility. On Friday, the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority (RWA) held a tour of the plant for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, giving participants a look into the belly of one of the area's most crucial pieces of infrastructure.
“Our goal is to reach out to the community and let the community come into our facility,” said Jesse Culbertson, assistant chief operator of water management at RWA.
The tour began in the building’s long, thin atrium—what workers at the plant refer to as “the sliver,” Culbertson said. Sunlight streamed in through skylights, reflecting off the shiny, gently sloping stone floor. Designed by Steven Holl Architects—a New York-based firm famous for angular, cantilevered institutional buildings—the building’s cross-section is shaped like an inverted water droplet. 
The entryway of the building, known as "the sliver."
The metaphor extends inside the building, too. The atrium’s left wall, made of rough board-form concrete, represents the unfiltered water that is piped into the building from Lake Whitney, and the smooth, swooping drywall opposite symbolizes the clean water that comes out.
The plant, which finished construction in 2005 at a cost of $49 million, is one of RWA’s four surface water treatment facilities. These facilities and the authority’s seven well fields provide over 40 million gallons of clean water per day to roughly 430,000 people across 15 municipalities, from Derby in the west to Branford in the east, and from Cheshire in the north all the way down to the coast.
The origins of the plant stretch back to 1862, when Eli Whitney Blake II dammed the Mill River, creating Lake Whitney and giving New Haven its first reservoir. The dam replaced a smaller dam that Blake’s father (the nephew of Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin) had constructed on the river at the end of the 18th century to power an armory and grist mills.
The construction of the Lake Whitney dam was commissioned by the New Haven Water Company, which had been founded 13 years prior and took on water supply responsibilities for the city after plans for a publicly owned utility failed at the last minute in 1859. The company not only sought to provide drinking water to New Haven’s growing population, but also saw the need for fire protection as timber buildings went up across the city. Shortly after construction of the dam, a pipeline was constructed that ran from the reservoir to a tap on the New Haven Green.
In response to public complaints about water quality, the company built a purification facility between 1902 and 1906, located on the site of today’s Whitney Water Treatment Facility. The facility was an expansive tiered stone and brick construction and used a process called slow sand filtration to purify water.
The original Whitney Water Treatment Facility. Photos taken in 1998, shortly before the building was demolished, by Joseph Elliot for the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER No. CT-186-A, public domain).
In 1977, the Connecticut General Assembly established the RWA, which acquired the New Haven Water Company’s assets, turning the privately owned New Haven Water Company into a nonprofit public utility overseen by the state. RWA shut down the original Whitney plant in 1991 due to deterioration and out-of-date purification technology. In 1998, construction began on the facility that sits there today.
“I won’t need to worry about when the new Whitney Water Treatment Plant will be built,” Culbertson said. He explained that most facilities like this are designed to last 25 to 50 years; this one will theoretically be in operation for a century.
The exterior of the facility.
Through a glass door at the end of the atrium sat the purification equipment. The facility uses a process called dissolved air flotation, or DAF. Culbertson explained that the DAF process—which is unique to the Whitney plant among RWA’s facilities—is far more space and energy efficient than conventional water treatment processes.
Water entering the plant is first treated with a pair of chemicals called coagulants and flocculants. Culbertson explained that these act as “a giant magnet,” causing organic matter like dirt and oils to stick together in clumps. Then, tiny bubbles of air are forced into the water, which floats these contaminants to the surface of the water where they are skimmed off.
“If it looks like brownie mix, you know you’re doing a good job,” Culbertson said as he looked down into the pit of sludge. 
Culbertson talks about the DAF tanks.
Next, ozone—a molecule made of three oxygen atoms—is added to the water to kill any bacteria and viruses. A large vacuum pulls the ozone out of the water, it is converted back into atmospheric oxygen and is then emitted through the building’s green roof. Finally, the water moves through a carbon filter—similar to the one found in a Brita, but five feet deep—which removes any remaining impurities.
“You could be a part-time chemist and part-time mechanic on any given day,” said Culbertson, who has worked at RWA since 2006. “The amount of maintenance is incredible.”
Filters and pipes always need cleaning, and purification chemicals must constantly be adjusted. Operators closely monitor the water at each stage of the process, testing it in labs located in the upper level of the building. Culbertson said he has noticed that, over the last three years, warmer, shorter winters and bigger spring and summer storms have caused more variation in the quality of water that flows in from the reservoir. Wind and rain can cause sediment to be stirred up, and high temperatures and increased amount of storm water runoff tend to cause algae blooms in the reservoir.
Heading up to the labs.
“As soon as we hear about something, we start looking into it,” Culbertson said, explaining that RWA is constantly testing for new harmful chemicals like PFAS. “We far exceed regulations.”
Faucets bring water from each step of the treatment process to the labs for testing.
Nonetheless, the tour came at a time when RWA is being held under close public scrutiny. This week, at a special session in the Connecticut General Assembly, lawmakers will debate whether RWA is permitted to purchase Aquarion Water Co., a Bridgeport-based private water utility currently being sold by Eversource Energy.
RWA is also in the midst of discussions with a Fair Haven condo association which racked up over $138,000 in debt to the water company due to a leak. Last week, members of the Winters Run Condominium Association voted to repay the debt in its entirety, though not without first expressing their frustrations with RWA. As reported in the New Haven Independent, Condominium Association President Ken Krayeske called RWA aggressive and a “utility bully.”
While Culbertson didn’t address these specific issues, he did mention that RWA works with regulators to provide residents in the greater New Haven area with affordable, high quality water.
“You don’t have a choice of the water that comes into your home. It is our goal to provide the cleanest water that is safe and reliable all the time,” he said.”
“All that regulation, all that oversight, all that testing is for the right reasons.”
