Donohue & Associates and the City of Auburn, Indiana received a Merit Award in the 2013 ACEC Indiana Engineering Excellence competition. The award recognizes improvements to the City’s wastewater treatment facility to address deficiencies and increase wet weather capacity. Donohue provided planning, design, and construction administration services.

The improvements decreased the frequency of overflow events and improved quality of effluent discharged into Cedar Creek, lowered energy consumption by utilizing more efficient process and electrical equipment, and decreased water consumption by using process water for flushing the store-treat tank and installing pumps that do not require potable seal water. A new Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system increases the efficiency of the treatment processes by automatically adjusting for energy needs. Additionally, a 2.5-million-gallon storage and treatment tank provides primary treatment of Combined Sewer Overflows (CSO).