Sugar Beets and Drinking Water Now Have Mud Cat in Common

As the Mud Cat machine continues to restore all kinds of waters, it continues to demonstrate its flexibility. Two recent applications of the machine show how effective the Mud Cat can be in settling ponds, whether cleaning a city’s supply of drinking water or removing sugar beet pulp.

In St. Louis, Mo., the Mud Cat removed deposits of lime softening sludge that had collected in depths of 3-10 feet on the bottom of basins used by the City of St. Louis Water Division at its water treatment plants. The machine, which was used at both the Howard Bend and the Chain of Rocks plants, was put in use in time to restore the ponds before the peak summer water demands occurred.

As far as we know, this was the first time the Mud Cat has been used to clean a basin while that basin was providing drinking water to a city.

In California, the Mud Cat machine pumped organic sugar beet pulp, inorganic wastes, silt and limestone from a settling pond of the Spreckels Sugar Division of Amstar Corp.

In the inlet corner that was cleaned, solids were often as deep as 10 feet. The pond itself was 17 acres and had five aerator units in place. Mud Cat was needed because this aerating equipment failed to operate at peak efficiency due to the great depth of solids.