‘It was time’: Clarksville progresses on water sustainability project

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Clarksville is working on turning their wastewater into biodegradable pellets while also expanding the city’s water storage.

“The way Clarksville’s growing … if something happens — power outages, storms which we suffered recently — we felt it was time,” explained Mark Riggins, CEO of Clarksville Gas and Water.

The city is making progress on a nearly $300 million project that would add both a 36-million gallon water treatment plant plus thermal drying technology to the area. The dryers would turn Clarksville’s wastewater into something useful — and much less smelly.

“These dryers will take that product that we’re now shipping out … and dry it to a pelletized form. What it will also do is it can reduce up to 70 percent (of waste) that we send out,” Riggins said. “One of the main problems it will help with as well is the odor. That sludge right now going out there smells really bad.”

On top of taking away an unwanted odor, Riggins added that the city hopes to sell the pellets to local farmers for use on their land.

“Now that our local farming community has found this out, I get calls once a week, ‘Hey, when’s this thing going to be done?’” said Riggins.

Riggins added that this is the biggest project of this type that the city of Clarksville has done to date. The entire water plan is about sustainability in their growing city. Those involved aren’t worried about today, or even the next five years.

They’re looking far beyond that.

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“We talk about it often. We’re going to act like we’re going to live forever, and we’re going to work here forever,” said Riggins. “It’s not, ‘We’re going to retire and we only have to worry about it for the next five years.’ Whatever we do, we’re going to pretend like we’re going to have to deal with this from now on.”

Riggins said the thermal drying technology should be ready by spring 2025. Their second water plant is scheduled to be up and running in 2026.

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