Mount Hope Supervisor Paul Rickard shared a long list of sewer plant operational improvements under his helm with Hidden Valley residents at a Nov. 14 public meeting.
Hidden Valley, a suburban-style housing development off Guymard Turnpike, is home to more than 100 single-family houses and the only municipal sewer plant in town.
When Rickard took office in January, he was told that the sewer system was on the verge of a major failure and that a significant loan was available to purchase new membranes to relieve the overburdened plant.
“I thought it was important to first get a handle on what really was happening,” Rickard said at the meeting. One of his first moves was hiring Jason Pitingaro, who specializes in wastewater treatment and previously worked on the Hidden Valley plant as the town engineer.
Soon, water infiltration was identified as a key problem plaguing the plant.
In theory, sewer flow rates at the plant should mirror the levels of water use in Hidden Valley. However, collected data indicated that the former was often well above the latter, and on a very wet day, the sewer flow rate could run as high as 90,000 gallons, between five and six times that of the water usage, Rickard revealed at the meeting.
“You don’t want to process clean water at a sewer plant,” he said at the meeting. “We want to [drive down infiltration], drop the operating expenses, and improve efficiency.”
Following some tests, the town identified and closed a key infiltration point near a pumping station, which had let in between 15,000 gallons and 20,000 gallons of clean water per day.
Another problem identified in the plant was that it was not adequately manned to ensure timely monitoring and compliance with the legal parameters set by the state.
Following the resignation of the former in-house plant operator, Rickard hired H2O Innovations, a Canada-based professional company with expertise in the membrane bioreactor technology used in the Hidden Valley plant.
“We decided to give them the full management of the system, so they do our daily testing and operations, and they are also available for emergencies,” he said.
Rickard also worked with the town board to create the Hidden Valley Advisory Board, which aims to improve communications between the housing development’s residents and the town.
“This is not just me. This has been a team effort. All town board members made collective decisions to bring in a new engineer and H2O and to create the advisory board,” he said.
Other plant operational improvements under Rickard include enclosing the plant with walls to enhance operation and safety, fixing a design flaw to prevent sewage from backing up in the plant, and signing a new contract with the New York Power Authority to lower energy costs.
“The plant is running efficiently now,” Rickard said at the meeting, citing recent sewer flow rates that mirrored water usage levels and a reduced amount of sludge pumps.
“But, again, I don’t want to take a victory lap because there are so many factors, like we could have five days of rain and something breaks,“ he said. ”I want to be cautious about this.”
Rickard noted that the extended dry weather over the past months has minimized water infiltration and provided a good set of base numbers for continued plant monitoring and improvements.
“I think we are heading in the right direction,” Hidden Valley resident Mike Meere, a sewer district advisory board member, said at the meeting.
“I want to thank you personally. You have been there right from the beginning, and you never wavered,” Meere said to Rickard. “All we’ve got to do is just keep going forward.”
Rickard highlighted a new move in the coming year to further reduce water infiltration into the sewer plant: repairing about a dozen manholes in the housing development.
Under Rickard and the former town supervisor, New York state Sen. James Skoufis helped secure funding for the job.
Brian Monahan, another Hidden Valley resident and advisory board member, spoke in favor of continued efforts to identify infiltration points, as well as long-term financial planning.
“At some point, we are going to have to replace the plant, and the more work we do now to prepare ourselves financially for that, the less of a burden it’s going to be,” he said.
As of Oct. 31, the sewer district had a balance of $16,580 in its capital reserve.
According to the recently passed town budget, each Hidden Valley household will pay $40 more in sewer fees in 2025.
Aside from sewer fees, governmental grants and future out-of-district user fees are also discussed as potential financial solutions.
The Hidden Valley plant has a permit for processing up to 60,000 gallons of sewage a day and can be expanded to handle 90,000 gallons per day, according to the meeting.
Currently, there is no other housing development in the area that plans to tap the sewer plant.
“Once we have the plant operating properly and a really good idea of what our capacity for homes is, there might be financial opportunities for us at that point in time, as a community, to bring on other people and have them offset the costs of what it would be to upgrade the plant or put a new plant in place,” Monahan said.
