New Micron fab won't discharge to City of Boise water recycling facility after all, city still eying sites - boisedev.com

New Micron fab won't discharge to City of Boise water recycling facility after all, city still eying sites

Micron expansion

BoiseDev complete c overage

The City of Boise is moving ahead with its plans for a water recycling facility, but the city is sticking with its original plan instead of expanding the facility to accommodate Micron’s expansion.

Plans for a third water renewal facility in Southeast Boise to treat wastewater and recycle it back for manufacturing use in the growing industrial area are still on track to begin a multi-year design and construction process with the goal of opening by 2029. But, instead of what was briefly discussed in 2022, this facility will not be expanded to serve Micron’s $15 billion fab.

The City of Boise and Micron initially planned in 2022 to have the company invest private funds into the third water renewal facility to bring it online five years earlier than anticipated and make it large enough to accommodate all of the extra water used by the fab. This is now off the table and the city is back to building a facility only with it’s own funds and from a 2021 water renewal bond large enough to accommodate Micron’s current operations and other industrial users in the area.

Hayley Falconer, the city’s environmental manager, said Micron made the decision to build it’s own infrastructure to treat and reuse water from the manufacturing facility on its own and she didn’t have any insight into the decision. Micron spokesperson Erica Pompen did not respond to question from BoiseDev about what lead to the decision.

Falconer said the City of Boise’s plans for this third water renewal facility and plans for water recycling predate Micron’s decision to consider expanding its manufacturing in the Treasure Valley. Now, the city and Micron will coordinate their work to implement water recycling, but it will be a “parallel journey.”

“The Micron expansion was separate from the water bond and the third facility,” she said. “It became a bonus, but something that was very well aligned with work we had underway and had potential to accelerate that work, but now they’re back to being separate.”

This is part of the city’s water renewal utility plan passed by the Boise City Council in 2020, which planned improvements at the city’s aging facilities, planned to expand capacity to keep up with growth and add a water recycling component to preserve water as climate change could impact the city’s long term water supply.

Water treatment pilot up and running

Recycling wastewater is not a simple process.

It takes a variety of finely tuned technologies and processes working together to take used water discharged from a factory, like Micron or any other facility, and make it clean enough to be used again and again or discharged into the aquifer below our feet.

To calibrate the process, the city started an Advanced Water Treatment Pilot earlier this year near Micron to test different treatment technology with the real water the semi-conductor manufacturer is discharging now. The pilot is housed in a series of conex boxes, creating a mini water treatment facility in a parking lot. This testing on a smaller scale helps both the city train its employees and use the data to design what type of treatment processes it will need to put in the new water renewal facility.

Falconer said it’s also been a great tool for engaging with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality and members of the public.

“We have real data and technology we can show (state regulators), and that helps their understanding of what this is and how to permit it,” she said. “The open houses we’ve done with community engagement of this pilot and the ability to show people the technology and talk about it is also really incredible.”

This third facility will help the city’s wastewater capacity expand across the whole city by taking on capacity currently being sent from Southeast Boise to either West Boise or Lander Street, leaving more room at those facilities for growth.

Water company Veolia raised some concerns about the city’s water recycling efforts in the past, but company spokesperson Madeline Wyatt told BoiseDev the concept now as a greenlight from the utility. Veolia technology is being used in the water treatment pilot.

“We see the project as one of the tools that will ensure we have water supply for the Valley now and in the future,” she wrote in an email. “We appreciate how the City has engaged with us over the last year. Their innovative technology and forward-looking work for the City not only serves the needs of our industrial partners, but also ensures water supply is safe for generations to come. We look forward to continued collaboration as the project evolves and ultimately comes online.”

Where will it go?

There are two components to a water recycling facility and the City of Boise is still considering what land to purchase for the project.

The city will need to build both the treatment plant, where the water will be cleaned, and a recharge site to inject it into the aquifer. The vision is to recycle as much of the water as possible for industrial reuse, but it will also be put back into the aquifer if there is more cleaned water available than facilities like Micron would like to take back.

Falconer said the city is currently investigating a variety of sites to see what would work for both the acreage needed and what is appropriate for groundwater recharge. This includes analyzing the depth of groundwater in the area, soil type and the composition of the rocks in the area. The city is also examining the flow of groundwater in the area to see where new water added would move.

The city has three potential sites under investigation for the project.

“We’ll take all of that information and not just the details of what’s underground like distance to the site, distance to potential water users and run it through a business case evaluation and monetize the risks and the costs,” she said.