Thurmont
sewers get tanked
Town commissioners decide to fund
$4.6 million equalization tank to avoid sewer overflows and
back-up problems
By James Rada Jr.
News Editor
THURMONT,
Md. – Think of it as a way for the Town of Thurmont to
tell Mother Nature to slow down.
The
town’s wastewater treatment plant can handle about 4
million gallons of water during a rain event. That’s
normally more than enough to deal with the amount of water
that will flow into the plant, but if it gets more than that,
you might wind up with sewer overflows or backups.
A flow
equalization tank is a place where that excess wastewater
can be held until the flow through the plant has lessened.
“It
has nothing to do with capacity,” said Randy Eyler,
head of Thurmont’s wastewater treatment department.
“It’s a holding tank. If we get 4.5 million gallons,
we can process 4 million and the rest will be put in the tank
until we can handle it.”
Up to
now, the town commissioners have been hesitant to fund the
construction of a 1 million gallon equalization tank because
it is estimated to cost $4.6 million. The continued repair
of the town’s sewer lines and an increase in the wastewater
treatment plant capacity is estimated to cost another $10.5
million. However, with the recent jury decision against the
town involving sewer back-ups in some homes, the commissioners
feel the need to take steps to avert any future possibility
of the same thing happening.
“You
can throw all you money into I&I and hope you can fix
it or do this and guarantee it can handle it,” Mayor
Martin Burns said during a recent town meeting.
He said
the equalization tank “instantly mitigates the issue”
of sewer overflows and allows the town the time to complete
the repairs to the sewer lines.
“An
equalization tank can be built and put into service a lot
faster than I&I repairs,” Eyler said.
Eyler
estimates that repairs to the town sewer system could take
as much as 10 years and even then, the town system will still
have inflow and infiltration issues like any other system.
“It
is over such a vast area and we’ll virtually have to
replace everything,” Eyler said.
A cost
estimate by the engineering company Stearns and Wheler had
the equalization tank complete by 2009 if started this year.
