Hollister
– Construction of the city’s new $57 million wastewater
treatment plant is about to reach two big milestones.
Hollister – Construction of the city’s new $57 million wastewater treatment plant is about to reach two big milestones.
And even though one of those milestones comes a week later than planned, City Engineer Steve Wittry said the plant is still on track to finish by the end of 2008.
Excavation for the plant’s treatment tanks is almost finished, he said, and should be completely done by Monday morning. Wittry said he’s relieved most of the giant hole – 270 feet long, 176 feet wide and 24 feet deep – has been excavated without problems.
“When you dig holes like this, you never know what’s below it,” Wittry said. “When you finish excavating, a lot of your delays go away.”
Wittry noted that an unexpected discovery – American Indian remains or dangerous chemicals, for example – could have caused a major delay.
Although the project will require more digging, Wittry said the treatment tank is by far the largest excavation. The tank will be the plant’s first stop for wastewater.
“If anything’s going to cause odors, this is it,” Wittry said. “This is a key element.”
From there, the water will move on to the membrane treatment facility, where it will be treated through biological processes, and then on to the chlorine contact chamber, which Wittry said is “a rat’s maze” where water will be disinfected.
Not everything is going quite as smoothly as the treatment tanks. Wittry said the contractor has yet to finish installing the stone columns that will sit beneath the plant’s major structures. The columns are designed to help protect those structures from earthquake damage.
Wittry had hoped to finish installing the columns in February, but the dirt beneath the operations center failed to compact properly. Wittry said the final columns should be in place today, and the stone column installer – one of only two such devices in North America – will be shipped off in a week.
“They lost a little time, but they’re making it up,” Wittry said.
The completion of the treatment plant, which is planned for Dec. 7, 2008, or earlier, should bring an end to the city’s sewer hookup moratorium.
The moratorium has brought new development in Hollister to a virtual standstill. It has been in place since 15 million gallons of treated wastewater spilled into the San Benito River in 2002.
Wittry has said the city plans to start talks with the Regional Water Quality Control Board – the agency that imposed the moratorium – to facilitate lifting the moratorium as soon as possible.
Construction of two other key elements of the treatment facility, the seasonal storage pond and the sprayfields, should start later this year, Wittry said.
Hollisterites can check out webcam footage from the construction site at www.
hollister.ca.gov. Wittry said he doesn’t know how much traffic the site is attracting, but he gets phone calls when it’s not working.
“So people are looking at it, and not just city (employees),” he said.
Anthony Ha covers local government for the Free Lance. Reach him at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or ah*@fr***********.com.
