Officials break ground for Phase 2 of wastewater plant improvements
SALEM
“A lot of this is maintenance on the plant,” city Utilities Superintendent Don Weingart said.
The ceremonial breaking of ground took place about an hour before the city Utilities Commission held its monthly meeting, with representatives of Burgess & Niple, the engineering firm on the project, taking part, along with commission members, city officeholders, and utilities personnel.
City Utilities Commission Chairman Bob Hodgson said the work is “all part of three phases of planning started 10 years ago to bring the plant up to standards.”
The upgrades are both to satisfy the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and to replace dilapidated equipment that’s not up to today’s standards and to quote Hodgson is “falling apart.” The city can’t get parts for some of the equipment due to its age.
A three-bay garage that dates back to 1928 will remain, with a new administration building attached to it as part of the project.
Bob Schreiner of Burgess & Niple said plans include installation of a sludge storage pad, replacing five primary clarifiers or settling tanks with two new circular settling tanks, converting one of the old primary tanks to use for sludge thickening, constructing the new administration building and rehabbing the old service building and converting it to an operations building.
He said this project will improve primary settling of waste solids and the thickener will held reduce the amount of sludge, making it easier to treat. With a place to store treated sludge on site, he said the city will save money from having to send treated sludge to a landfill in the winter time when it can’t be spread on farm fields.
Stanley Miller Construction of East Sparta won the contract with a bid of $5,285,870 and recently started moving onto the site and clearing ground. The project is expected to take 18 months to complete.
During the meeting, the commission briefly touched on Phase 3 improvements, which are in the planning stages. Burgess & Niple engineers are working on a pre-engineering design study to develop the engineering scope and possible cost for the firm to design, bid and provide the construction engineering the project.
A preliminary price estimate for Phase 3 was $8.1 million which included engineering and construction, with the work to include anaerobic digester improvements, sludge dewatering equipment and building construction, instrumentation, and other improvements all related to how the city’s wastewater or sewage is handled.
mgreier@salemnews.net