ODNR-Punderson State Park Water System Improvements
Punderson State Park is located in the northeastern portion of Ohio and consists of a lodge, cabins, campground, golf course, sports chalet, marina, boating and swimming facilities within its 741 acres of land and 150 acres of water. Punderson Lake is the largest and deepest natural kettle lake in Ohio and potable water for the park was supplied by 10 groundwater wells and 6 individual water treatment systems located throughout the park.
Operating and maintaining 6 individual water treatment systems within a park is a difficult and expensive task and ODNR needed to evaluate other options.
We first wanted to determine whether abandoning the existing treatment facilities and tying into a local municipal system was feasible, but this option proved untenable. Next, we evaluated the water distribution within the entire park and determined that one new combined water treatment plant in combination with improvements to the distribution system was cost effective and greatly simplified operations.
The new combined water treatment plant included aeration, detention, and filtration treatment equipment for iron and manganese removal, ion exchange softening, cast-in-place concrete clearwell tanks, backwash tank, brine tank, high service pumps and standby generator.
For the distribution system, a new water booster pump station was added with duplex vertical multistage centrifugal pumps while various sections of the distribution system were looped to provide a more efficient means of distributing water. These were connected to the existing elevated water storage tank located in the campground area.
Direction drilling water line installation methods were used to minimize disturbance to the golf course, existing pavement, and other mature areas of the park.