Overview

Waymart Area Authority (WAA) accepted the challenge to provide sewage service to a new 1,200-bed federal prison planned adjacent to its service area. Advocating a regional approach to wastewater management, WAA also proposed to accept the wastewater from an existing, nearby 1,100-bed state prison. This regional approach focuses the area’s wastewater management capability to one location, and eliminated the aging state prison wastewater treatment plant and discharge. To accommodate wastewater from the two prisons, WAA needed to construct a new pump station, force main, and interceptor, and upgrade its wastewater treatment plant from 210,000 to 715,000 gpd.

Solution Details

We provided design and permitting services for the treatment plant upgrades, and wastewater and effluent conveyance systems. Recognizing that the wastewater from prisons has unique characteristics and a higher strength than normal domestic sewage, we identified a comprehensive treatment process to manage the prison and municipal wastewater flows.

The treatment plant upgrade was designed around a Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) process and included the following operations/processes: Influent pump station; Decant equalization; UV disinfection; aerobic digestion to meet Class B Biosolids; and belt filter press for biosolids dewatering.

The wastewater treatment process was designed to meet stringent water quality effluent limits, including nutrient removal to protect this area’s high quality watershed. To further protect the quality of two recreational lakes and eliminate more stringent effluent requirements, we designed a pump station and three-mile long force main to discharge treated effluent downstream from the lakes. The treatment plant upgrade also included site work, refurbishment of the existing laboratory/operations building, and the addition of additional office and meeting space. We also assisted in obtaining the funding that allowed the entire project to be built without raising the rates of the existing customer base.

What They Said

"We appreciate the time taken with us to review all the alternative technologies available in order to select the wastewater treatment system that best meets our needs. You listened to our input, and made sure our needs were met in the system design."

-Manager