$70 million wastewater treatment plant nears completion

FREMONT - The city's $70 million sewer plant project is on schedule to be completed by March, Water Reclamation Center Superintendent Jeff Lamson said Thursday.

Much of the treatment plant has been up and running since March, but MWH Constructors is going through the final stages of building the bio-solids section.

The project involved an overhaul of the city's existing wastewater treatment plant and the installation of new, automated equipment.

Kenn Meyer, a plant operator, said that prior to the project's technology upgrades, workers would have to physically walk through the plant to check on operations.

Now, there are 100 computer and video monitors where employees can check equipment, pump stations, and processes involved with treatment of sewage, Meyer said.

"We were doing it like the Flintstones. Now, it's like the Jetsons," Meyer said.

The project is designed to increase the capacity of the wastewater treatment plant from about 10 million to 24 million gallons per day, as well as reduce the amount of combined sewer overflow (CSO) events that push untreated water into the Sandusky River.

The new facility went online March 10 and treated 2.13 billion gallons of sewage in 2016 during what Lamson described as a dry year (31-32 inches of precipitation), up from 1.52 billion gallons in 2015.

"Even though we had considerably less precipitation, we treated more sewage," Lamson said.

Lamson said that with the exception of Fulton Street, the city had no CSO events in the last quarter of 2016.

The new plant also features a biological nutrient removal process, which involves removing the type of nutrients that cause algal blooms in Lake Erie. Lamson said that process has resulted in the plant registering low or below detection levels of biological nutrients.

The project has a guaranteed maximum cost to the city of $63.3 million. With engineering, design, programming and startup costs, plus work on Haines Street, Lamson said the final cost will be around $70 million.

The city shaved about $7 million off the project's construction costs through value-added engineering, he said.

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is mandating the capacity increase and reduction in Fremont's CSOs — which occur an average of 70 times per year — as a requirement of the federal Clean Water Act.

The state EPA says it must be down to four or fewer per year when the WPCC project is completed.

Once the plant expansion is done, the city will conduct a two-year study for the Ohio EPA on how much water can be treated at the plant and how much combined sewer overflows had been reduced with the project improvements.

Lamson said Thursday the city received a three-year extension from the EPA on the study, pushing the deadline back to January 2021.

He said the city hoped to hold an open house in the fall when the public could see the new facility.

"The public spent a lot of money on this. I want them to be proud of what they have," Lamson said.

dacarson@gannett.com

419-334-1046

Twitter: @DanielCarson7