Lansing Board of Water & Light - Water Utility

Water Utility

The Lansing Board of Water and Light obtains all raw water from a series of 124 wells located throughout the city of Lansing, making it one of the few public utilities for large cities that provides water exclusively from wells. The city sits atop, and draws its water from, the Saginaw Aquifer, a natural, but limited, underground reservoir 4 cubic miles (17 km3), and 550 square miles (1,400 km2) in size. The raw water is pumped directly to two conditioning plants: the John Dye plant located in downtown Lansing and the Wise Road plant located on the southwest side of the city. At these plants, water hardness is reduced by adding lime and soda ash to the water, which reacts with dissolved calcium and magnesium to form calcium carbonate and magnesium hydroxide floc. The floc then settles out of the water in large settling basins, and any residual floc is removed via sand and gravel filtering. This process reduces the hardness of the water from approximately 411 parts per million (ppm) to about 85 ppm. The finished water is then chlorinated and fluorinated, and sent to storage prior to distribution.

At the John Dye conditioning plant, two pumping stations located on the north and south sides of the plant draw finished water from three ground level storage facilities and pump to the distribution system. The Dye pump station, located on the south side of the conditioning plant, pumps water to the north towards Dewitt Township, Bath Township, and Watertown Township, to the west to Delta Township, and to the local distribution system. The Cedar Street pump station provides supplemental pumping capacity during periods of high demand. The Wise Road conditioning plants similarly pumps water directly into the distribution system, and generally feeds portions of Windsor Township, Delhi Township, and Alaiedon Township. Using a series of normally closed valves and booster stations, a pressure boundary exists roughly along I-96.

The Lansing Board of Water and Light retail customers consist of residential, commercial and industrial customers within the service areas, totaling approximately 56,000 customers. Approximately 48,000 of these customers are residential, 7,000 commercial, while the remaining customers consist of industrial customers. In addition, the Lansing Board of Water and Light sells water on a wholesale basis to the local distribution systems in Delta Township and Meridian Township.