(COLORADO SPRINGS) — The Cherokee Metropolitan District (CMD) celebrated the completion of a design-build wastewater facility expansion project for CMD in southeast Colorado.

The new wastewater treatment facility will treat 4.8 million gallons per day and will serve 40,000 customers in the Colorado Springs community and surrounding areas.

“When we collect wastewater from people’s homes and businesses, we then bring it into this facility and we treat it to clean it, and some of that treatment process from wastewater providers all over the place is treated to a level to where its non-potable and it just goes down a stream and not used again,” said Amy Lathen, CMD General Manager. “In this case, this water is so clean it can be used again in the future if it’s needed. So this is a sustainable, resilient project and it is the only one in the state of Colorado with this type of pre-filtration system this size.”

CMD said the wastewater treatment plant is the United States’ largest municipal membrane bioreactor (MBR) and high-recovery reverse osmosis (HRRO) treatment plant, and Colorado’s largest MBR.