The St. Albans Municipal Utility Commission is a municipally owned water and wastewater utility created by city ordinance on August 3, 1953. The Utility Commission serves as the policy making body for the system as regulated by the Public Service Commission of West Virginia and Bond Covenants adopted by City Council.
THE ORGANIZATION The Utility Commission consists of five members, with the Mayor as Chairman. The other four members are appointed by City Council to staggered four year terms. The Utility Commission employs a General Manager to operate the 41 employee system. The Commission holds membership in the Rural Water Association and is a Charter Member of the West Virginia Water Quality Association.
WATER SYSTEM The Water Treatment Facility was originally constructed in 1921 and operated as the St. Albans Light, Water and Ice Company. In the 1980s, the facility was extensively updated to provide a multiple-barrier treatment process utilizing coagulation, floculation sedimentation, filtration and disinfection. The facility produces a high quality drinking water at a rate of 2,200 gallons a minute. Five certified water quality professionals currently operate the facility ten hours a day, which provides more than 3.1 million gallons a day to 6,100 residential, commercial, governmental and industrial locations in St. Albans, Sun Valley, Riverlake, Dry Ridge and Riverbend. The facility is capable of immediately producing 3.6 million gallons of water per day and with minor modifications, can treat as much as 3.6 million gallons per day.
WASTEWATER SYSTEM The Wastewater Treatment Plant was a 2.5 million gallon per day high-rate trickling filter process. The additional process units included two solids thickening units, one floating cover anaerobic digester, two dystor digestion units and two solids dewatering presses. The wastewater facility serves 7,700 locations, which includes Amandaville and the Greater St. Albans Public Service District. The Municipal Utility Commission completed construction of a multi-million dollar upgrade to the wastewater plant and collection system in July 2001. This project replaced the 2.5 mgd trickling filter technology with four state of the art Reactor basins, Ultra-Violet disinfection, flow equalization and three aerobic digestion units that will be capable of treating 4.0 million gallons per day, with storm surge capacity of 12.0 million gallons.
