Plant History
Through the late 1800's and early 1900's, the City of Grand Haven used various wells from the east and west sides of Grand Haven. During that time, a private company and the City’s municipality provided water from both locations. The Wiley Water Works pumping station was located on the east end of Grand Haven near the area of East End Park. The municipal pumping station was located near the Power Plant, which is now the location of the BLP's Diesel Plant. The City's first water filtration plant was constructed in 1927; it had a 2 million gallon per day capacity and provided safe potable drinking water to a relatively small community. Following World War II, increasing population expanded the existing water supply to incorporate a unique well system. The Ranney Collectors (wells), which utilize the lake bottom sand as pre-filtration before plant filtration, were constructed at the Grand Haven State Park; and in 1961 a submerged intake(the crowsfoot)was installed below Lake Michigan, again using the sand as a natural barrier for impurities. This system provided water to the surrounding communities until 1983.
With an existing plan in place since 1978, the governing bodies approved an expansion project that would build a new facility capable of supplying water at 12 million gallons per day. In 1986, the first true "direct filtration" facility in Michigan was constructed.
In 1990, a third intake structure was constructed at the Grand Haven State Park in conjunction with a new Lake Pumping Station. This new structure was an intermediate submerged intake system that enhanced the overall quality of raw Lake Michigan water to our existing filtration plant. In the spring of 2001, we expanded the submerged intake system by installing a second similar intermediate intake south of the existing intake. The new south intake, with the existing north intake, will be capable of delivering up to 28 MGD of pre-filtered Lake Michigan water. To complete the south intake project, the crowsfoot intake and the Ranney Collectors were removed, due to poor raw water quality and increased maintenance costs.
The Northwest Ottawa Water System (NOWS) is planning for the future with a project that will expand our existing facility to accommodate our new intake system. In 2004, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality approved a study for “deep-bed high-rate, mono-media direct filtration” as our primary filtration technique. The current facility has an approved rated capacity of 15.5 million gallons per day.
Our daily average is 5.4 million gallons per day.
Last year’s total pumpage was over 1.9 billion gallons.
Our customers of Northwest Ottawa Water Systems (NOWS) include City of Grand Haven, Grand Haven Charter Township, Village of Spring Lake, Spring Lake Township, City of Ferrysburg, Crockery Township.