The City’s current Wastewater Treatment Facility, located off Water Street, was built in 1978. Over the years equipment failures, costly repairs and increases in wastewater volume have resulted in the need for a new facility to meet the demands of an increasing population and ever-changing environmental regulations.

The new Wastewater Treatment Plant will be a tremendous upgrade from the current plant in a number of ways. One of the more popular differences is that the odor will be significantly reduced, a big plus in everyone’s book!

The new plant will be using a flexible process called the modified Ludzig-Ettinger process. That’s a fancy name for a pretty simple process that allows us to be ready for possible changes in our plants permit down the road. With nutrients like Nitrogen and Phosphorous being targeted for reduction due to their harmful effects on water bodies, we wanted to be prepared in the event nutrient reduction is required in our future permit.

We will be using high efficiency equipment that will significantly help reduce our energy consumption as well as giving us a high level of control over the plant and outlying pump stations.

We will also be creating two new sources of revenue at the new plant. The first revenue stream will be created by our ability to accept septage again. I am hoping this is good news to the haulers that are travelling to Brewer to dispose of their waste who are burning up extra fuel and man hours.

The second stream of revenue generation will consist of developing a new limited certification laboratory. This will allow us to choose six samples that we can analyze for other plants and charge a fee for them. Currently most plants including ours send samples to southern Maine to be analyzed by professional labs.

Eventually the old plant will be demolished and the old site will become a nice addition to the Harbor Park with only a small pump station building remaining on the property.

Construction of the new facility is underway and is located off the Bayside Road, approximately a third of a mile south of Foster Street. September of 2012 is the time frame for substantial completion and hope everyone is as excited as we are to see this project become a reality.