RICHMOND — The Richmond Utilities District’s plans to upgrade its wastewater treatment plant — delayed for over a year now — are looking up, thanks to an additional $1.59 million federal grant announced last week.
The district has planned for the upgrade since 2016 and secured more than $12 million through the U.S. Department of Agriculture for construction that was projected to start last year. The project design took longer than anticipated and construction costs came in high after the district learned it would have to build a new chlorine contact chamber and grit removal system.
To pay for the added expense, the USDA has agreed to give the Richmond Utilities District an $800,000 loan and a $790,000 grant through the Rural Development program.
The system was last upgraded in the mid-1980s but those upgrades only had a 20-year life span. The upgrades will include new pumps and mechanical equipment to clean the water more efficiently before discharging it into the Kennebec River.
Construction on the two-year upgrade project will start around April 1. T. Buck Construction out of Turner will do the work, which includes updates to all existing infrastructure and the addition of a sludge storage tank and maintenance workshop.
The upgrade will allow the treatment plant to handle the wastewater entering the system during high-volume rain events. During the heaviest storms when 4 to 5 inches of rain falls, groundwater finds its way into the system through leaky pipes and it challenges the ability of the plant to treat all of the wastewater adequately, Interim Superintendent Chuck Applebee said.
Items such as toilet paper and plastics are screened out of the wastewater before it enters a secondary purifying process to remove grit from the water and add air into the wastewater to allow aerobic biodegradation of pollutants.
If too high a volume enters the plant, some of the wastewater can bypass the secondary treatment process and flow into the Kennebec River.
That happens once or twice a year, he estimated, requiring the district to write a report for the state Department of Environmental Protection detailing how the problem will be addressed.
The updated plant should be able to catch all of the water coming in so it all goes through the entire treatment process, Applebee said. There may be some instances where heavy rainfall still triggers an overflow but the new system will do a much better job preventing that, he said.
“The state has reviewed our plans and that’s one of our goals is to catch these high rain flow events,” Applebee said. “They’re bigger and longer than they used to be.”
While Richmond Utilities District operates the water and sewer systems in Richmond, this project is limited to the wastewater service for about 560 customers. The plant serves downtown Richmond and a handful of customers just over the town line in Bowdoinham along Route 24.
“They’ll still have full use of the wastewater plant,” he said. “Everyone will still be able to flush and use water.”
The upgraded wastewater treatment plant will have the capacity to handle domestic waste from any development that may be constructed along Route 197 as far as Interstate 295, according to Applebee. Service currently stops a short distance beyond Richmond Middle and High School near the water towers. In the other direction, it reaches down Route 197 as far as the Richmond-Dresden bridge.
He couldn’t provide exact rates Monday but said the Richmond Utilities District began incrementally raising rates about a year and a half ago to help pay the debt on the project. The increases are averaging 6% to 8% a year, he said.
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