New Ashton Sewer Project by Steve Zera
Prompted and supported by Crest Foods, the Village of Ashton has recently received a grant through DCEO (De- partment of Commerce and Economic Opportunity) for the construction of a new sewer line that will connect our Mix Facility waste stream to the Ashton waste water treatment plant. Yes, that means a mile and a half of new waste infrastructure along route 38 to include cleanout basins, manholes, lift stations, and a lot of pipe. The project will take nearly a year and a half to complete with the anticipated connection date no later than December 31, 2018. Why is this necessary? When the Mix Facility was built and began operation in 2003, we were allowed to construct an elaborate, in ground, waste system to handle all of the process waste. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) regulates every drop of water and every chemical that we put into the ground, testing it monthly, so as to protect our drinking water from wells and maintain safe volumes of ground and run-off water levels. As a com- mercial waste emitter, we must have a valid operating permit from the EPA to run that facility. Two things have hap- pened over the course of almost fifteen years to prompt the need for this to happen. First, our blending output and subsequent process waste water output has grown substantially, meaning we’re putting more and more water and chemicals into the ground. Secondly, the EPA regulations and guidelines have gotten much more rigid, making it very difficult for us to manage the critical levels of our chemical output. The bottom line is, we just couldn’t do it anymore. So, we have no choice. Everything we do starts at the Mix Facility. If we want to stay in business, we need to do this. One big problem is the cost. This is a multi-million dollar project that wasn’t necessarily planned for. Enter the grant program. We were made aware of the DCEO grant program that offers funds to communities, allowing them to enhance their infrastructure, to help local businesses like us as well as promoting new industry to move to the area. Part of the program also calls on the benefactor (Crest) to make substantial improvements and capital invest- ments to insure stability and continued growth as a result of this project.
The grant application process has taken the good part of a year to com- plete and almost all of the Crest hourly people were involved. We thank all of you for taking the time to answer questions and fill out forms. This could not have happened without your help. We found out in early August that the Ashton grant had been approved. Initial engineering for this project has already been done and we’re hoping to work closely with the village to move this project along. Hopefully, by the time you read this, there’ll be some signs of activity along route 38 between Ashton and the west facilities.
Ashton >
West Facilities >
16 Crest Ink October, November & December 2017
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