County spending $283M to upgrade Water Pollution Control Plant.
UTICA — A project to upgrade Oneida County’s Water Pollution Control Plant on Leland Avenue has three goals: * Eliminate sanitary sewer overflows into the Mohawk River.
One of the biggest changes is that instead of incinerating the sludge from the facility, the plant will produce methane gas and make electricity for the facility, said Steven Devan, commissioner of the Oneida County Department of Water Quality and Water Pollution Control.
Planned work to be completed through 2021 includes: * 2016-2019: Bio-solids handling technology upgrades, including the installation of new anaerobic digesters.
What happens is when the sludge gets out of the tank, we put it in the thickener and that’s what makes it denser before we have to process it.” Upgrades also are being done on the Sauquoit Creek pumping station in Yorkville, giving it new screening facilities, pumps, a bigger generator and a new force main, Devan said.
Devan recently gave Oneida County legislators a tour of the facility to show them where the estimated $283 million the county is borrowing for the project is going.
Legislator Mary Pratt asked for the tour mainly so she could educate herself on the project but also because she wanted to know what the county was spending so much money on.
… It’s one thing to hear about it and another to see it.” The project is expected to take five years, which will transform the more than 60-year-old plant into a more environmentally sustainable and technologically advanced facility, Devan said.
The upgrades are designed to help eliminate overflows into the Mohawk River, satisfy New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Consent Order requirements, and assist the city of Utica with treatment elements of its Long-Term Control Plan.
Efforts to reduce sanitary sewer overflows into the Mohawk River began in 2007.