New headworks facility under way at wastewater treatment plant

Building the concrete vaults for the headworks project at the Manchester Wastewater Treatment Plant.

by Marsha Chartrand

According to Thomas Thompson, Manchester’s wastewater treatment manager, it’s been close to a couple of decades since Manchester’s wastewater treatment plant was last reconfigured. And back then, it was considered state of the art.

But also in that time, there’s been a lot of new products developed that tend to get into the treatment system — most notably, the ubiquitous “flushable“ wipes that are used not just for babies anymore, but are now marketed to entire families. And when Thompson uses the term flushable, you can hear the invisible quotation marks around the word. Because those products are not really “flushable.“ They all go to the same place.

“The way we have had to deal with them up till now is that they would clump into tanks and we’d have to get rid of them before they went into the treatment system,“ he explains. “But as they have become more and more popular and we get more and more of them in the system, that has become nearly impossible to keep up with.“

Thompson has been talking for a couple of years with former Village Manager Jeff Wallace and current Village Manager Michael Sessions about budgeting for a headworks project that would provide additional screening and grit removal to get rid of the additional waste as well as the grit it picks up along the way to the wastewater treatment plant.

A new headworks plant, which will be adjacent to the current plant, will include an auger that feeds the unusable product into a dumpster that can then be hauled away. “The organic material can then come through the main plant for treatment,“ Thompson says. “It will improve our efficiency and provide a higher-quality effluent.“

This is the year the project is happening, and it got underway in late January. At this point, the project is on schedule and, assuming it remains so, the new headworks plant will be online in mid August to September.

“We can never be sure of supply chain issues, of course,“ Thompson said, “but we remain optimistic. So far, everything has been going very well.“

Meanwhile, remember: The wipes are not “flushable.“

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by Marsha Chartrand

Marsha Johnson Chartrand, a founder, writer, and copy editor with the Manchester Mirror, is a 50-year resident of Manchester. She has a long history of volunteer and community involvement.