Salt and Sulphur

This morning I noticed a truck delivering a load of salt to the water treatment plant that is in (or next to) Iroquois Park. It is actually not uncommon to see one of these truck backed up and unloading.

Without treatment, Rensselaer would have extremely hard water. I live in an old house, and it has an amazing array of pipes in the basement because at one time it had both hard and soft water lines. Some went through a big water conditioner and others did not. However, because the city now treats the water, most of those pipes do nothing.Our city water also has problems with sulfur, and I do not know if the salt also takes out that smell, or if some other process is needed. When the new treatment plant was dedicated, there was an open house and all these questions were answered, but I no longer remember what the answers were.

Update: From my e-mail:

After taking my 8th grade classes to the water treatment for some ten years, six class periods each year, I have the presentation memorized (yes, I've heard it sixty times, in fact I often gave the tour myself when the guys were busy doing something else). It turns out that they blow the sulphur dioxide out of the water using air. This aerator is positioned right after the water comes out of the ground and just before it gets its first injection of chlorine. It the big tall unit at the back of the plant near the park shelter. You often can smell the sulfur in the air.