Utility & Infrastructure
Valley Sanitary District Recycled Water Project — Plant HVAC
Plant HVAC and mechanical piping for a recycled water treatment facility.
Client
Walsh Construction
Location
Indio, CA
Service Line
A small, specialized HVAC scope on a major recycled-water plant expansion in Indio — Athena’s piece of a Walsh Construction design-build.
Valley Sanitary District has cleaned Indio’s wastewater since 1925, and it’s in the middle of one of its biggest upgrades in years: the Reclaimed Water Project — a plant expansion adding a second digester, a new grit chamber, expanded bar screens, new switchgear, and a sludge thickener so the district can reuse more of what it treats. Walsh Construction is building it on a Schneider Electric and Stantec design-build. Athena’s part is small and specific: the HVAC. We came in as part of the design-build team, pricing and refining the scope across several budget rounds as the drawings matured from 60% to 100%, then self-performed two pieces of work the plant genuinely needs.
At a wastewater plant, the air is the hard part.
At a wastewater plant, the air is the hard part. Athena furnished and installed the odor-control system’s foul-air fan — a 4,000-CFM FRP fiberglass unit on a VFD-rated motor, built to move corrosive, humid plant air without rotting out, with new PVC-coated ductwork to tie it in. Fiberglass and coatings instead of bare steel, because at a treatment plant the air eats ordinary equipment.
The other half of the scope keeps the brains cool. The expansion’s new electrical room (where the switchgear and controls live) needed dedicated cooling, so Athena installed two Daikin split systems to hold the room’s temperature, with the refrigerant and condensate piping and thermostats to run them. New gear like that doesn’t tolerate a hot room, and now it won’t get one.
Like a lot of Athena’s water-infrastructure work, this was a small scope inside a very big project — and we’d rather be exactly right on our part than spread thin across someone else’s. That part is done: the foul air is handled, and the new electrical room stays cold. The plant expansion around it keeps going.
Client: Valley Sanitary District. General Contractor: Walsh Construction. Design-Build: Schneider Electric / Stantec. Athena scope: an FRP odor-control foul-air fan on a VFD-rated motor with PVC-coated ductwork, and two Daikin split systems for the new electrical room (refrigerant and condensate piping, thermostats, and start-up) — self-performed by Athena Engineering as the HVAC design-build subcontractor.
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