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Kent County repairing wastewater treatment basin

Submitted by Kent County Public Works

Kent County is repairing a part of its treatment system that discharged undertreated wastewater into the Murderkill River this past summer.

Kent County Levy Court approved about $400,000 earlier this week for a new liner for the county wastewater treatment system’s south basin.

The county's wastewater treatment facility is permitted to hold 20 million gallons a day. The flow averages 12.5 million gallons a day. The county has two basins at its wastewater facility near Frederica treating its wastewater with oxygen. 

 

Diana Golt, the county’s acting public works director, said Kent County has been relying on one basin ever since the public works department discovered this past summer the other had a hole in its liner.

 

“It’s a redundancy that we have two basins, but you run the risk, particularly if there’s a storm or other event that would send a large amount of water towards our plant, that that might mean we’re not as effective” Golt said.

 

Earlier this summer, county personnel were working on a project on the north basin. As they were doing maintenance and repairs, a bubble developed in the south basin in July and undertreated wastewater spilled into the Murderkill River that exceeded the amount of bacteria they were permitted by the state.

 

"We were not running at 100 percent and we were unable to treat the water to the proper limits," Golt said.

 

As a result, Delaware’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control placed a 30-day ban on shellfish harvesting in the Delaware Bay north of the Mispillion Inlet until Mid-August.

 

Once they put a new liner in, the county still needs to re-install diffusers and airlines. Golt said she expects the project as a whole to cost $1 million.

 

Golt says the south basin should be up and running by early 2018. 

 

The county had a similar issue in 2005 when a bubble caused a problem in the north basin. Golt says repairs took six months before the system was operational again.

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