Pocatello Public Works partners with ISU engineering students

For the past eight months, senior civil engineering students Caryn Wendt, Fatimah Alhaddad, Zaid Almansour, and Helal Alshaibani have been working with the City’s Public Works Director Michael R. Jaglowski, PE on their capstone senior design project. With Jaglowski’s help, the students have been looking into beneficial reuse applications for the cleaned, treated and finished municipal wastewater leaving the City’s Water Pollution Control facility.

“Before that water enters the Portneuf River, the City can still utilize it in some beneficial way,” said Jaglowski. “What these students have done is technically and economically analyzed 12 different solutions to use our treated water. These solutions were engineered from the ground up to put our water to good use for locations like irrigation water for the City’s parks and golf courses or providing water for aquifer recharge.”   

While the exercise has been theoretical in nature, it has proved valuable for both the students and the City.

“Up until this point, we’ve studied a lot of theory and calculations,” said Wendt. “With this project, we’ve been able to take and apply what we’ve learned into a real world scenario.”

“From the City’s standpoint, if it were to ever build such a system, we can take the groundwork laid by these students and build upon it,” Jaglowski said.

As they’ve designed it, the system would feature eight miles of pipe to transport seven million gallons of treated water per day to different sites around Pocatello. The project also features a 45-acre detention facility designed to help recharge the aquifer.

“When I started this project, I was unsure of what to ask or where to start,” said Alhaddad. “Now, I’m able to think through the challenges more and this experience will definitely help me as I move forward with my career.”