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WATER TREATMENT
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Two Kinds of Filtration
When the MDC was established in 1929, the region’s water was filtered at a state-of-the-art slow
sand filtration facility that is still in use at the West Hartford Reservoir. Over the years
technology changed, and in the early 1970s the MDC built a more modern rapid sand filtration
facility at Reservoir 6. Today, both facilities produce the same high quality water. They just
do it a little differently.
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West Hartford Water Treatment Facility
| Location:
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Farmington Avenue (Route 4) West Hartford
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| Built:
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1920-1960 (five stages)
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| Filtration:
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Slow Sand Filtration
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| Capacity:
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50 million gallons per day
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| Water Sources:
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Barkhamsted and Nepaug Reservoirs
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| Towns Served:
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East Hartford, Hartford, Newington,
Rocky Hill, West Hartford and Wethersfield
(portions of Farmington and Glastonbury).
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Slow Sand Filtration
The slow sand filtration system at the West Hartford facility has 22 underground filter beds, some as large
as a football field. Raw, untreated water is piped directly from the reservoirs to each bed for cleaning.
Because the water is not pretreated, the filtration process is relatively slow. Nonetheless, the size of the
facility enables about two-thirds of all MDC water to be filtered here.
View SLOW SAND FILTRATION schematic
View RAPID SAND FILTRATION schematic
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Reservoir 6 Water Treatment Facility
| Location:
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Bloomfield, Entrance off of Route 44 in West Hartford
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| Built:
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1970-1972
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| Filtration:
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Rapid Sand Filtration
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| Current Capacity:
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21 million gallons per day
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| Potential Capacity:
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Up to 80 million gallons per day
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| Water Sources:
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Barkhamsted and Nepaug Reservoirs
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| Towns Served:
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Bloomfield, East Hartford and Windsor
(portions of Glastonbury and South Windsor).
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Rapid Sand Filtration
The Reservoir 6 rapid sand system combines chemical treatment with filtration at six small filter beds.
Pre-treating the water before it is filtered removes most of the impurities. Because of this, any remaining
impurities can be removed by filters at a rate 32 times faster than at West Hartford. That is why the process
is called rapid sand filtration.
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About the Sand
The filters in the MDC’s water treatment facilities use a combined 50,000 tons of special quartz
sand, usually from New Jersey and Rhode Island. The sand, which measures 1/75th of an inch in
diameter, captures both solids and microscopic bacteria suspended in water.
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