Date: Fri 14-Feb-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: ANDYG

Quick Words:

sewage-treatmentplant-Whitten

Full Text:

Sewage Treatment Plant Is About Two-Thirds Done

(with photo)

BY ANDREW GOROSKO

A small army of workmen has been toiling through the winter assembling the

components of an $8 million sewage treatment plant on an eight-acre site

alongside the Pootatuck River.

When completed, the sprawling facility will cleanse the wastewater carried by

the municipal sewer system now under construction and will clean the sewage

discharged from the state-owned Fairfield Hills complex.

Workers have installed a triple box culvert across Tom Brook, allowing

vehicles to pass from the end of Commerce Road to the treatment plant site.

An administration building composed of red, brown and ivory colored concrete

blocks is being built nearest the Commerce Road entrance. A sewage filtration

building stands beside it. A massive emergency generator is positioned on a

concrete pad next to the filtration building. In the event of a power outage,

the generator will be switched on to provide power to run the plant.

The treatment plant is about two thirds complete, said John Whitten, the

senior field representative for Fuss and O'Neill, Inc, the Manchester

engineering firm which designed the sewer system for the town.

If all construction continues as planned, the town sewer system should be

complete by September. Initial wastewater flows to the treatment plant will

come from Fairfield Hills, the former state mental hospital whose largely

vacant buildings are now used only by Addiction Prevention Therapy for drug

rehabilitation and by the town for temporary office and library space. The

state will also route wastewater from Nunnawauk Meadows and Garner

Correctional Institution to the treatment plant.

Fairfield Hills has reserved two-thirds of the wastewater treatment capacity

at the million-gallon-per-day treatment plant. The town has the remainder.

The plant is laid out to allow another million gallons of treatment capacity

to be built nearby.

Two areas on the plant site have been posted as "off limits" to construction

crews because they may hold artifacts of archaeological significance.

When wastewater arrives at the treatment plant from different directions it

will be combined in a headworks building, be channeled to a series of

oxidation ditches and then exposed to ultraviolet light for cleansing. The

wastewater collected by 21 miles of town sewer lines will then enter

clarification tanks, after which it will enter the filtration building before

being discharged into a drainage channel leading to the Pootatuck River.

The treatment plant will provide tertiary wastewater treatment and include

denitrification equipment to reduce nitrogen levels in the wastewater.

"The project's going together well. Everything's going good. There was [much

time spent] planning this," Mr Whitten said.

The town plans to hire a management firm to operate the treatment plant and

possibly maintain sewer lines in the Borough, Taunton Pond North and Sandy

Hook Center.

As the treatment plant construction continues, workers are laying out

construction plans for four sewage pumping stations that are needed to move

sewage uphill from low spots on the periphery of the sewer system. The

stations will be built on Hanover Road, Glen Road, Taunton Lake Drive and

Baldwin Road.

Workmen started construction on the $34.3-million town sewer system in

November 1994.

After the sewer system is complete, the town will set a time period during

which residential and non-residential customers will be required to connect

their wastewater drains to the system. The "out of pocket" costs that sewer

users will bear to connect to the system will vary depending on the complexity

of their particular sewer hookup.

Building a municipal sewer system was discussed for decades before voters

approved bonding for the project in 1992. The system is being built to rectify

longstanding groundwater pollution caused by failing septic systems.