Work Begins On Sewage Treatment Plant

Date: Fri 29-Mar-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: ANDYG

Quick Words:

sewers-treatment-FHH

Full Text:

with cut: Work Begins On Sewage Treatment Plant

BY ANDREW GOROSKO

A small army of bright yellow earthmoving machines is clambering across a

verdant hillside on the Fairfield Hills grounds, near the Pootatuck River.

These powerful machines will be used by workmen building the central component

of the town's sewer system - a wastewater treatment plant.

In normal cases, sewage treatment plants are the first component of a sewer

system to be built. But in Newtown's case, the site selected for the plant was

considered to be of archaeological significance, so work on the plant was

delayed until archaeologists could do test excavations in the area. While the

archaeological work proceeded, sewer line installation took place on the

periphery of the sewer system, on Taunton Lake Drive, Diamond Drive, Hanover

Road and West Street, among other places.

After digging test pits at the sewage treatment plant site, the archaeologists

recovered representative Native American artifacts dating from the Late

Archaic period, some 4,000 years ago. The stone projectile points recovered

were what the archaeologists had expected to find, given the lay of the land.

The artifacts indicated the Native Americans had recurring seasonal

occupations at the site.

The Public Archaeology Survey Team (PAST) decided that certain sections of the

site would remain undisturbed during sewage plant construction. Those

undisturbed areas may be excavated for archaeological research in the future.

The million-gallon-per-day sewage treatment plant will be used by both the

town and by state facilities located at Fairfield Hills. The town has reserved

one-third of the wastewater treatment capacity for itself, with the state

receiving the remainder. The state will close its existing sewage plant at

Fairfield Hills when the new plant opens.

The town's Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) last December chose C.H.

Nickerson and Company, Inc, of Torrington as the general contractor for the

sewage plant project. At $8,795,300, Nickerson submitted the lowest qualified

bid for the construction work. Eight firms submitted bids on the job.

The force of gravity is the simplest way to get sewage to flow to a treatment

plant. But for topographical reasons, four, and possibly five, sewage pumping

stations will be built to make the system function in its hilly New England

setting. The pumping stations will be built at low points on the periphery of

the sewer system.

Site Clearing

"We're just clearing the site," said John Whitten as he reviewed a voluminous

set of blueprints depicting how the sewage treatment plant will be built. Mr

Whitten is the chief sewer project inspector for Fuss and O'Neill, Inc, the

Manchester-based consulting civil engineers who designed the sewer system for

the town.

The plant will provide three separate stages of wastewater treatment and be

able to cleanse one million gallons of sewage daily before discharging it into

the Pootatuck River. Accumulated caked waste solids, known as sludge, will be

separated from the wastewater and disposed of separately.

Nickerson has 540 days to build the sewage plant, putting its completion date

in September 1997.

To get to the construction site now, one must follow a circuitous route over

the Fairfield Hills grounds. But when the plant is completed, access will be

provided via an extension of the dead-end Commerce Road over Tom Brook, a

tributary of the Pootatuck River.

Sewage treatment plants are designed for the area they will serve and are "not

off-the-shelf type of stuff," said Mr Whitten. "Every plant is built

differently."

Nickerson will do the bulk of the construction work at the site with

subcontractors used for some jobs there. An estimated 5,000 cubic yards of

earth materials will be trucked from the site in preparation for construction.

The treatment plant site, when viewed from above, looks roughly like a bow

tie. The two sections of the site that tuck inward those areas designated by

the archaeologists to be left undisturbed during construction.

The site has been planned so that additional construction could expand the

sewage plant to handle two millions gallons of wastewater daily in the future,

if needed.

The town is building a $30.4-million sewer system to rectify longstanding

groundwater pollution problems caused by failing septic systems in the

Borough, Taunton Pond North, and Sandy Hook Center. The town's construction

project follows the issuance of a pollution abatement permit by the state

Department of Environmental Protection.