Entry no.29 - Infrastructure in Dresden
This entry will deal with infrastructure related facilities located in Dresden.
City Overview (looking north)
1 - D.M Peters Water Treatment Plant
Posthumously named after a former mayor of Dresden who authorized the construction of this facility. This medium sized facility is the only water treatment plant located in the South Shore borough. It provides water to Dresden's 102,000 residents plus an additional 25,000 residents from several adjacent towns. The plant was constructed in 1951 replacing a smaller plant located near the port. The facility is municipally owned and operated.
Built on a man made peninsula in the south west quadrant of the city, the D.M. Peters WT facility does not require advanced filtration methods due to the Medina's Ocean's west coast current which travels south to north. There are no major industrial facilities located south of Dresden.
Water is first pumped into the facility via an 1.2m intake pipe which draws water directly from the Median Ocean the inlet for which is located 2.5km's off shore. Water need not be desalinated because all of planet Azura's ocean's are freshwater! 
Sentiment and microorganisms are mechanically separated first in a small sedimentation basin and then the water is passed through rapid sand filters(both system inside the building). Afterwards the water is disinfected with chloramine(storage tanks located outside), which is longer lasting and safer than chlorine. Water is then finally pumped into the municipal water system. Additionally there are a dozen water towers located throughout the city(including the one seen here) which have a total storage capacity of 55,000 about enough for about one days worth of water usage.
The plant is 0.7 hectares in size and the average daily water production/consumption is 62,280 cubic meters per day. This is the consumption of Dresden and is surprisingly accurate to what a city of 125,000 people would use in the real world - seems maxis got that right at least. The plant may look small but it's more or less realistic in size for it's actual production.
Currently the Dresden's water system is self contained. An interconnection to Central Pretoria's much larger system is current being built under Cisco Bay in case of contingencies but won't be completed until 2020.
2 - South Shore Sewage Treatment Plant
This medium sized facility is likewise the only wastewater treatment plant located in the South Shore borough. The plant is located in the north west quadrant of the city squeezed in between highway 700 and the Medina Ocean and was constructed in 1970. The facility is municipally owned and operated.
Prior to this raw sewage was simply pumped into the Medina Ocean without treatment. At first this was not a significant problem as Dresden was small in size and the strong ocean currents quickly diluted the effluent. But as the city expanded so did the amount of crap that it expelled. By the 60's beaches in Central Pretoria(down current) were closed over 90% of the time due to high bacteria counts. This lead to the construction of several sewage treatment plants across the region.
This facility treats water from the same catchment area as the water treatment plant(pop. 127,000). Surface runoff is not treated in Dresden. The facility has clarifiers, sedimentation & biochemical oxidation ponds and a small bio sludge incinerator. New pollution regulations which came into effect in the late 80's necessitated either the installation of advanced scrubber technology or a taller stack. This facility has a 'two in one' system. The 378ft/115m tall stack has advanced chemical reactors built directly into it(hence it's high tech appearance) to treat and capture dioxins, furans and other toxins released during the bio sludge incineration process.
3 - Cisco Bay Bridge(approach)
Major bridges and tunnels can also be considered as vital pieces of infrastructure. Here lays the southern approach to the Cisco Bay Bridge, the longest bridge in the nation. The main span of the bridge is located one city to the north. I'm hoping that one day someone might gift us with an elevated RHW bridge as for now we only have the maxis bridge option. Elevated RHW is used to provide the require clearance height(180ft/55m) for large ocean going vessels to navigate underneath the bridge and access both the Port of Pretoria & the Port of Dresden.
The railway line to the south is GWR's Portland subdivision, it enters into the Vandenburg tunnel in the next city over. Also(can't see it visually) the Fastraxx L & ME commuter rail lines run underneath the roadway deck.
The highway is heavy congested in the rush hour carrying up 18,202 vehicles during it's peak (7AM-8AM).
4 - Port of Dresden
A medium sized cargo port, but not a container port. I'll cover this facility in one final transportation related entry still to come(rails & ships).
You can see it's general layout from the overview.
5 - The RoS(Ring of Steel)
Already covered extensively in entry 21 you should check it out if you haven't already!
This is the central telecommunications hub for the South Shore.
Recently I switched rock textures. Unfortunately the new textures(greyish) don't mesh well with the mmp's(brownish) that I used here. I will have to come back and redo the screen slope later on.
6 - Biohazard Incorporated's Plasma Waste Gasification Plant
Here comes the controversy.
Located in the community of Vallyrun near the south east quadrant of the city, this facility uses the Plasma Gasification process to vaporize waste material converting organic matter into synthetic gas which is comprised mostly of Hydrogen, CO & CO2. The resulting syngas can be used to produce electricity directly but at this facility it is simply stored onsite and then transported(no power generation). This facility is privately owned and operated and is located beside to GWR's Farham rail subdivision.
Plasma gasification is much cleaner and environmentally friendly in comparison to traditional waste disposal methods. Cities across the world are now adopting the process to eliminate the huge costs and environmental issues of large incineration plants and landfills. New technologies and innovations have greatly reduced the operating costs of the process. However this facilities construction was highly controversial. Although the site is zoned for industrial use and had previously been occupied by an asbestos plant which that was shut down after sale of the product was banned nationwide, the neighborhood is generally residential in nature. Local residents were hoping that a more benign industrial facility would be built here. When it was publicly announced in 2005 that Dresden city council had approved a waste processing plant it was meet with immediate protest. Residents did not believe that the process was as environmental friendly as the government hired experts claimed. Most agreed that if a waste processing plant was to be built in the city it should be built in Industrial Sector G near the port where another waste incinerator is already located. Unfortunately there were no available undeveloped sites large enough remaining in industrial Sector D to house such a facility. Many local residents started picketing the site as soon as construction was started. So they were preventing equipment and workers from entering the site. As a result construction was temporarily halted while extensive public consultations were initiated. The NIMBY's, as city council called them would not relent no matter what assurances they were given. Eventually the PRGA(Pretoria Regional Governing Authority) took over jurisdiction in the matter from Dresden's city council. PRGA's first move was to rezoned part of the site for a police station. The neighborhood had been requesting one few many years now. Though ironically this proved to be somewhat of a double edged sword as once construction on the gasification plant was restarted the DPD(Dresden Police Department) were under strict orders to enforce the law on site. Anyone who even loitered on the sidewalk next to the site for more than 5 minutes was promptly arrested for trespassing. Civil rights advocates were up in arms but ultimately there was little that they could do to stop such occurrences from happen especially after they were arrest and detained as well. The PRGA later stepped in again and all charges were withdrawn. The PRGA took several other steps to mitigate the controversy prior to the facilities construction. To placate the public the facility was extensively redesigned.
Original site design
One of Biohazard Inc. (BHI for short) main goals in the original concept for the site was for increased storage capacity of both garbage and syngas. This would reduce transportation costs and allow for the company to transport "goods" only at the most economical time. Two massive storage tanks were to be located on the north east corner of the site,. These tank could store up to 3,000 cubic meters of syngas. This represented 150 days at maximum production rates. One liter of syngas contains approximately half the energy of LPG(26 MJ/L). Meaning these spheres when full would contain the energy equivalent of 39 Terajoule each. This is equal to 9 kilotons of TNT! Of course energy is released far more slowly and inefficiently in a chemical reaction when compared to nuclear reactions by several orders of magnitude. Still the resulting worse case scenario was modeled by the PRGA. Should a BLEVE(which of course is an acronym for Big Loud Explosion Very Exciting... 
) occur in in just one of the tanks the resulting explosion would be equivalent to the detonation of 45 tons of TNT devastating the community. The model predicted a death toll of 281.
This was obviously unacceptable. And so are my photoshopping skills at the moment, I'll work on that...
The PRGA mandated that BHI to draw up a new site plan with far stricter regulations than Dresden's municipal council had originally approved. The maximum amount of syngas that could be store on site was reduce from 6,000 cubic meters to a mere 600 - 15 days production. 6 smaller 50,000 liter tanks were approved of for use and relocated to the south side of the site furthest away from residential areas. Should any of these tanks BLEVE(short for Blast Leveling Everything Very Effectively...? ) the resulting casualty count was calculated to be zero this time. A flare stack was also required to be install in order to flare off excessive syngas production when storage inventories were high and in case of pressure spikes in the containment vessels. Several years latter once the PRGA was no longer directly involve in the approvals process, BHI seeked approval for and was granted permission to install an additional 300,000 litter storage tank. Technically this was allowable under the revised permit. But it was located in an underground tank on the north side of the site, something that would likely not have been approved of at an earlier date because of its closer proximity to residential buildings just north of the plant.
Another one of the communities major concerns was the large open landfill storage area. Again the PRGA rescinded Dresden's permits for such. Instead the PRGA required that all waste the facility received would be either dumped into the processor or otherwise stored onsite in sealed plastic or steel containers. There were addional concerns over the increased noise and air pollution that would result from garbage and syngas transport trucks traveling through the community to and from the facility. As a measure of good faith BHI cancelled their syngas transportation contract with a trucking company, though they likely would not have done so had the contact guarantees kicked in already. And instead signed a contact with the GWR to build a rail spur off the Farham sub to transport syngas from the facility by rail. While the up front construction costs of the rail fueling spur significantly added to the projects capital budget, the long term transportation contract was much cheaper. Note; BHI applied for and were granted an interest free loan from Dresden's city council for construction of the spur. When this matter came to light several years later it was highly controversial. An independent inquiry is currently underway to determined if any untoward activity occurred during the process(i.e. bribes ).
As a result of these changes, this is how the plant now looks;
Dresden city council made a small good will measure of their own by construction a pedestrian bridge over the west part of the site. This however did not prevent 80% of the council from being booted out in the following election. As they say, payback's a *****! 
7 - Bunsenburner Waste to Energy Incinerator(aka 'The Nasty')
This facility is located on Pier 18 in Industrial sector D. It is the largest waste incinerator in the region. An average of 3300 tons of garbage is burned on a daily basis here accounting for nearly 25% of regions garbage production. Nearby residents have taken to calling it "The Nasty" for the obvious reasons. The plant is municipally owned but privately operated.
Phases one & two were completed in 1973 & 74, each of which can burn up to 550 tons of trash a day with a nameplate capacity of 124MW combined. Phases three was completed in 1988 adding 2200 tones of garbage burning capacity and 248MW of power prodcution. Trash is routed by trucks directly into the large white building which contains a large internal storage area. Phase 3 has a single 480ft/146m tall multi flue smokestack which is in compliance with the federal pollution standards. Phases 1 & 2 receive trash mostly by train of a small spur that branches from GWR's Almera sub. The two units have four 266ft/81m tall stacks which are not in complacence with federal pollution standards. More advance pollution controls and/or taller stacks are required to comply with these regulation. Advance pollution controls are of course preferable since they actually reduce harmful emissions, but taller stacks are acceptable as they deposit pollution further up wind (into either the nearby mountain ranges or the Medina ocean) and away from populated areas. Because this is considered a vital government owned facility(landfills are banned in the region) it has been granted a waiver to continue operating, though only for a limited amount of hours per year - 2,200. This wavier has a term of 5 years with the expectation that more advanced controls will be installed at the end of the term. The current waiver has been extended twice already... 
Inside The Nasty
The maximum power production of the plant at full burn is 372 MW which is routed through the Hardack hydro corridor to central Pretoria.
Below is the interconnection to the grid.
You'll notice Elemental Research's 'T2' laboratory was recently built next to the incinerator. This land was previously used as a landfill before phase 3 was built.
8 - Dresden Generating Station
Also previously covered, extensively I might add in entry's 22 and 23. I have made a few minor improvements since then though.
The circuit breakers through which power is routing from Dresden GS's switch yard onto the Hardack hydro corridor has been upgraded. A recent study indicated that the electrical grid, specifically the main transformers located in the switch yard at Dresden GS, were highly vulnerable to damage from EMP's. Any interruption to this line would leave 1.2 million people, or about half the population of Pretoria without power for an extended period of time. Needless to say would be quite devastating.
Unlike in the real world() measures were immediately taken to upgrade the system with a new advanced circuit breaker and disconnected seen below
Water textures defects previously seen have been corrected and other textures i.e. parking have been updated.
Here's a couple of updated overhead shots of the facility as it stands today.
As usual here's a couple of mosaic shots to close out the entry.
That's it for the infrastructure. Dresden truly is the work horse of the region.
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