Toledo’s ‘Ozonator’ ought to remove consuming water danger from poisonous algae blooms

TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) – It’s called “Ozonator”. It is a new $ 50 million wastewater treatment plant at the Toledo Collins Park water treatment facility.

Adding an ozone treatment to the water kills harmful microcystin that comes from toxic algal blooms in Lake Erie.

This is the poison that paralyzed Toledo’s drinking water supply in the summer of 2014.

Andy McClure is the Collins Park Water Administrator and says this is the best technology out there for purifying the water. “Ozone is like bleach, but it’s much more aggressive and also more difficult to handle because it degrades so quickly. It works really fast. “

The process acts as a kind of final filtering process for the harmful microcystin that comes from the poisonous algal blooms. “We have a very controlled process of taking in oxygen and generating electricity to convert it to ozone and then apply the ozone to the water,” says McClure.

Another $ 50 million was spent on the treatment pools, where the other chemicals like carbon are added and filtered to purify the water.

The $ 104 million wastewater treatment upgrade could reasonably mean Toledo would not see another drinking water emergency due to toxic algal blooms.

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