Multimillion dollar sewer plant upgrade underway

Town Council Water and Sewer Committee toured the wastewater sewer treatment plant off of East Chandler Street Monday morning to get a look at the ongoing $27.1 million expansion project.

The plant can treat up to 4-million-gallons-per-day through a recently completed 1-mgd expansion, a separate project that cost more than $3 million. Currently, the plant actually treats between 2.5 and 3-mgd of sewage per day, depending on precipitation.

The phase two work, which the three-member committee viewed Monday, will add another two million gallons to the daily treatment capacity, making it a 6-mgd plant.

In addition, the upgrade will reduce the amount of environmentally damaging nutrients being dumped into the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. The DEQ is requiring treatment plants statewide to reduce nitrogen and phosphorous levels by 2010.

To that end, the Virginia Water Quality Improvement Fund will chip in $5.3 million to upgrade Culpeper's wastewater treatment plant.

Adams Robinson, an Ohio-based contractor, is doing the work and the contract calls for completion by December 2009. The town is paying for the project primarily with debt.

-Allison Brophy Champion