The Town of Bayfield and the La Plata Archuleta Water District will hold a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new joint water treatment facility located at 215 E. Lakeside Drive at 4 p.m. Tuesday. The public is invited to get a firsthand look at the new facility.

The La Plata Archuleta Water District paid for the upgrade and expansion of the town's water treatment plant, adding 1 million gallons per day (MGD) of additional capacity to the current 1.5 million gallons per day. The new capacity is shared between the La Plata Archuleta Water District (0.75 MGD) and the town (0.25 MGD).

The expansion of the water treatment facility also includes a building sized sufficiently to allow future expansion up to an additional 1 million MGD, allowing total available capacity to increase to 3.5 MGD.

FEI Engineering designed the facility improvements, and Integrated Water Service (IWS) was the contractor on the project.

The project included demolition and upgrades to the intake facilities, modifications of the existing plant building, construction of a new water treatment plant, and completion of work while the existing plant remained in operation. Work also included demolition of an existing raw water intake and check structure, resetting of the existing in-ditch parshall flume, and the construction of a new raw water intake structure.

Within the existing plant, work included removal and replacement of an existing vertical turbine pump, upgrades and re-purposing of the two remaining existing vertical turbine pumps along with all the associated electrical and control system improvements, the removal and replacement of the existing Trident filtration media and underdrain systems, the relocation of the chlorination system to the new building and the installation of chlorination and coagulant feed lines from the proposed facility to the existing system.

At the Los Pinos Pump Station, two existing vertical turbine pumps and the associated electrical systems were removed and replaced with the installation of a remote communication system to the water treatment plant.