Work has started on the second phase of an effort to enhance water quality and pressure for southeast Manteca as well as put in place services for growth along the Austin Road corridor.

The contractor is doing site work for a 3.6 million gallon water tank on the east side of Atherton Drive north of Woodward Avenue. The project also involves building a booster pump station to serve peak water demands of existing customers.

The tank is expected to address pressure issues for a wide swath of Manteca. It is essentially replacing the 51-year-old water tower that has stood unused for several years since it was declared by structural engineers as unsafe during an earthquake. The city drained the 300,000 gallon tank after the report was issued to significantly reduce seismic safety concerns.

The city ultimately wants to tear down the old water tower located on Wetmore Street to expand the municipal corporation yard.

Mozingo Construction is completing work related to the installation of a 24-inch water pipeline from East Yosemite Avenue down Austin Road that then turns west under the freeway to  follow Woodward Avenue before turning north on Atherton Drive to reach the water tank site. The pipeline cost $2.2 million.

The water line is connected with existing pipe already in place that brings surface treated water into Manteca from a treatment plant 22 miles to the northeast near Woodward Reservoir.

The introduction of treated surface water into the pipelines serving the neighborhoods around Woodward Park will improve the overall quality as well as water pressure. Currently those homes are served by municipal well water

The surface water is treated with state-of-the-art filters. That compares to well water — while clean and potable — isn’t cleansed to the same degree as is possible with the treatment plant’s micro filters.

A series of submerged panels at the treatment plant contain 25,000 spaghetti like strands of thin hollow fiber membranes known as ZeeWeed.

As the water passes through, the hollow fiber membrane serves as a physical barrier to contaminants. The porous plastic fibers are hollow in the center. The surface is covered with billions of microscopic pores that filter out all known bacteria and almost every known virus, with minimal or no chemical use.

The fibers are only part of the process at the Nick DeGroot Water Treatment Plant that has redundancy, constant sampling, and computer as well as human oversight to assure the cleanest water possible flows to the cities of Manteca, Lathrop, and Tracy.

The two projects are being paid for with a combination of fees collected from growth and monthly water users’ fees.