After Jackson’s approval, WBCA upgrades advance
Long-planned upgrades to the Western Butler County Authority wastewater plant, detailed in an Act 537 plan document, will advance to the next stage of approvals soon.
Jackson Township, the final of four municipalities to sign off on the plans, voted unanimously to send them off on Monday.
Jackson manager Chris Rearick said that the approval was “pretty straightforward.”
“Environmentally, it addresses environmental issues that are caused by inflow and infiltration in older pipes throughout the system, and it also better ensures capacity for future residents and businesses,” Rearick said. “For us, it really wasn’t a major discussion item.”
Jackson had previously approved the Western Butler County Authority’s $64 million wastewater treatment plant upgrade at an earlier date, when it was still packaged with upgrades to the Harmony pump station.
The Harmony pump station upgrades were later split off into a separate project from the WBCA plant upgrades, and were approved by all four municipalities — Jackson, Zelienople, Lancaster and Harmony — by April.
The next move is for the plan to be approved by the state Department of Environmental Protection, said Western Butler County Authority manager Autumn Crawford. Once Jackson and Zelienople provide the authority with the final paperwork of their resolutions approving the Act 537 plan, it will move forward to the DEP.
Residents most likely will not see construction on the Act 537 plan for at least two and a half more years, Crawford cautioned.
“It will likely sit with DEP for a number of months while they review it,” she said. “The (Act) 537 plan is not a design, and not a complete package. It is the first step to designing a plant. You go through DEP’s guidelines for the 537 plan, and through a process of elimination it will lead you to what the best technology is for your discharge needs.”
While not yet at the point of a final design, Crawford said, the plan does outline some older portions of the facility that will be upgraded as part of the project.
“The original plant was built in 1939. It was upgraded in 1959 and in 1978; those were the major upgrades. Then they did a project in 1999 to change from coarse air diffusion to fine disk diffusion, and then they added a tank,” she said. “We still use components of the 1939 plant, the 1959 plant, and the 1978 and 1999 plants as well. The 1939 component of the plant, we still use the tanks from that; they will be demolished and replaced. And the 1959 tanks will be demolished.”
While the facility has a long history, it’s not completely unusual among other sewage plants of the same era, she said.
“A lot of wastewater facilities were built off of the back of the Clean Water Act funding,” she said. “I would say this is probably one of the older facilities, but it is not entirely unheard of.”
