Mount Olive signs contract for plant repair
By Steve Herring
Published in News on November 12, 2015 1:46 PM
MOUNT OLIVE -- The Mount Olive Town Board has hired an engineering firm for an $813,700 upgrade project at the town's wastewater treatment plant.
Commissioners unanimously agreed to hire AECOM of Raleigh following a brief public hearing at their Monday night session.
No one from the public spoke during the hearing.
The project includes $73,000 for repairing the liners at the five-million and 28-million gallon lagoons; $75,000 for piping and value modifications for a filter that sends water to the sprayfield; $355,000 for back-up pump and piping at the influent pump station to handle large rainfalls like the recent ones so that in an emergency the plant can direct wastewater elsewhere so that there is no sewer spill; and $145,000 for an effluent metering flume.
Contingencies and technical and administrative costs account for $165,700 of the cost.
"We are in the process of working with the USDA to secure funding for this project," Town Manager Charles Brown said.
"One of our problems, although we have spent I don't know, $15 million on sewer treatment in this town, we probably have the highest tech treatment plant anywhere in eastern North Carolina," Mayor Ray McDonald Sr. said.
Mount Olive is the headwaters for the Northeast Cape Fear River, he noted.
"So whatever we put in that stream, they are going to get it all the way to the coast," McDonald said. "When the waste treatment (plant) broke down many years ago right after I came onboard they opened the values and the sewer went straight into the Northeast Cape Fear. It wasn't even treated.
"We had a lot of complaints from Kenansville and areas like that because of the high content of pollutants in the water that they were using for drinking water. That is when the state got really tough on that."
Now before any effluent goes into a stream it has to meet certain requirements, McDonald said.
"It should have been that way all along, in my opinion," he said.
Several weeks ago nearly a foot of rain fell on Mount Olive that normally would have resulted in a huge sewer spill, Brown said.
"We have been working diligently, not just on that part of the system, but in town as well to plug the holes in our collection lines,", he said. "We are apparently making progress because we had a small spill. It was like 36,000 gallons. Compared to what we have had in the past that is minimal."
McDonald said the problem was that rain and groundwater had been getting into the system.
Once that happens, it has to be treated, he said.
That places a strain on the system and is costly, he said.
The town is permitted 1.6 million gallons of treated wastewater flow per day at the plant. That includes one million to the Northeast Cape Fear and 600,000 gallons to the tree farm which is a drip irrigation system.
The lagoons are holding ponds where the wastewater is held until it can be treated at the plant, he said.
"The water that is produced at that plant is reclaimed quality water," Brown said. "You could irrigate your front yard with it. If he had an industry that came here that needed gray water, they could use that water in their manufacturing process or their cooling process."
It is a state-of-the-art plant, but is just in need of some upgrades to ensure that it works to its optimum capacity, Brown said.