Treatment plant upgrade wraps up
Council OKs final payment, sees progress of $3.5 million project
LANSDALE >> An infrastructure project that’s been in the works since 2012 is now officially complete.
A $3.5 million capacity upgrade project to the borough’s wastewater treatment plant is now done, and plant Superintendent Dan Shinskie showed off the finished project to borough council last week.
“We’ve tried, over the years, to squeeze every drop through the existing plant. I think we made pretty good progress with that, but we got to a point where we just had to do some construction to go to the next step,” Shinskie said.
In late 2012 the borough finished construction of a pipeline connection between Merck facilities in Upper Gwynedd and the boroughs wastewater treatment plant, located on Ninth Street behind the Electric Department offices and former temporary borough offices.
Once the Merck connection was complete, council commissioned a study of the plant’s capacity and operations during high flow events like large rain storms, and in 2013 that study recommended a series of long-term upgrades to increase the plant’s capacity. At that time, the study recommended increasing the size of pipeline connections and converting storage tanks into processing areas to increase the plant’s capacity by roughly two million gallons per day beyond the 4.5 million gallons per day it has processed since 1996.
“Our plant was built in 1980, and from its very beginning, there was too much flow during rain events for the plant to handle,” Shinskie said.
“I believe this is going to reduce the amount of times that we overflow, and as operators of the treatment plant, that’s the last thing we want to do,” he said.
After bids came in higher than expected in summer 2014, contracts were awarded later that year, and the project was rebid and won by Blooming Glen Contractors. Roughly 18 months, several change orders, and $3.5 million later, Shinskie gave borough council an overview of the completed project before they approved the final payment.
“What they had to do was install larger lines between all of the tanks, because we had bottlenecks: we couldn’t get the amount of flow we wanted to get,
Dan Shinskie, Lansdale Wastewater Treatment Plant superintendent “We’ve tried, over the years, to squeeze every drop through the existing plant. I think we made pretty good progress with that, but we got to a point where we just had to do some construction to go to the next step.”
through the plant,” he said, showing council a slideshow of dozens of construction photos.
“This is 24-inch (line), which we upgraded to 36inch line, to go from tank to tank, allowing more flow to get through the plant,” he said, showing slides of contractors digging several feet below ground and working near pipelines nearly as large as they are.
As he scrolled through a slideshow with photos of the plant before, during, and after the upgrade project, Shinskie explained the various screw pumps, clarifier drive, and storage tanks as they were worked on.
Tanks that had been used to store rain water during high-flow events are now being used to process water constantly, leading to more capacity.
“Instead of just storing water here during rain events, we can actually treat four to six million gallons through this plant, which basically doubles our treatment ability” of the plant, he said.
As of July 20, the newly expanded plant had yet to reach full capacity — “we’ve had such dry weather, it hasn’t been fully vetted yet,” according to Shinskie.
Much of the underground work, creating new concrete walls and placing pump equipment, is no longer visible — what had been grassy areas next to buildings at the treatment plant were excavated, work sites for much of the past two years, and have since been filled back in and planted with fresh grass.
Contractors are still “doing some restoration work, and waiting for the grass to grow, which is not happening very readily right now” due to the warm summer weather, Shinskie said.
A tour group from the Lansdale Public Library recently visited the plant, and Shinskie showed photos of the children and their parents being shown the various tanks and filtration systems. Any school groups or borough residents interested in seeing the plant can contact staff at (215) 361-8372 to set up a time to visit.
“I know it doesn’t sound very exciting, but I will tell you a tour of the wastewater treatment plant is a very exciting process. If you haven’t done it, take some time and go down there — just don’t fall into any of those tanks,” said council President Denton Burnell.
A final payment of $212,252.09 to Blooming Glen was approved by borough council July 20, the final of 16 needed for the project, which was largely funded by a general obligation bond borrowed by council in 2014.
According to documents included in council’s materials packet, the final payment brings the total project cost to $3,525,039.55, an expense council Public Works committee chairman Steve Malagari said was well worth paying.
“A lot of our investments are unseen, and a lot of them are underground, so this is one good way of showing where that money went to. It was a big expenditure, a lot of headaches at times, but it was a worthy expense,” Malagari said.