Henderson Assistant City Manager Christy Lipscomb’s report to the City Council about progress being made at the regional water treatment facility included information about subterranean placement of valve and piping, installation of new equipment to create dry sludge and dynamite.
Yep, they’ve been blowing up stuff out there.
“We had to use some dynamite in some areas,” Lipscomb said. There’s a lot of rock underneath the soil here in Vance County, and it’s not soft rock. It’s granite.
There were three different “events” to blast the rock so the underground work could continue.
“It was kinda cool to see,” Lipscomb said, explaining to the council that it wasn’t a big explosion at all.
They put the chargers in “and everything went ‘poof’ and that was it.”
There’s still a massive pile of dirt and granite as a result, but it all was necessary for the upgrades to continue.
A tentative completion date is October, and so far, the project is right on track.
Council members referred to a packet of information to see images of the construction project, which includes a building addition that doubles the length of the existing building.
When complete, the new building will provide new restrooms, locker rooms and a conference room.
“That was one of the big deals, one of the things we absolutely wanted,” Lipscomb said of the conference room. It will be used to host classes and continuing education training for employees.
There is some new equipment that employees will need to get training in, including a couple o chemical pumps that have been installed.
Each holds 10 million gallons and is part of a “super pulsator” process. It’s not a complicated process, she said, but it will create a more efficient process that keeps the sludge from settling to the bottom of the tank.
There’s a new rollup door that will make it easier to remove pumps when they need maintenance and facilitate brining in equipment.
There are two new clear wells in place to help the aging well that was installed in 1974.
That one will stay on line along with the other two until a future upgrade to replace its sagging concrete top can begin.
“There’s a lot of concrete and a lot of piping,” Lipscomb said.
The new sludge handling facility is about halfway completed, but when it’s all on line, the treatment facility will be able to dry the sludge and either haul it off – the local landfill doesn’t accept it – or “land apply” it.
Land application is the more cost-effective approach since the closest facility that accepts the material is in Person County.
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