Work has been completed on a $2.8 million upgrade at the Smithville Waste Water Treatment Plant.
In August, 2016 the Smithville Aldermen voted to award a bid to the W & O Construction Company, Incorporated of Livingston to do the work as recommended by the city’s consulting engineer, the J.R. Wauford Company. The bid was $2,794,000 for the project which included a new headworks and pump station, a new electrical building to power the system, a new bar screen used to remove large objects, such as rags and other debris from wastewater, and a new grit classifier that separates rock, sand, and grit from screened wastewater and a new SCADA automation and monitoring system which the operators use to help maintain efficiency of the system.
“The new headworks is designed to hold 8 million gallons a day to run through it. We’re operating an average of 1 to 1.2 million gallons a day so we have a lot of room for growth,” said Anthony Hasemann, one of the sewer plant operators.
To help pay for the cost of the project, the City of Smithville was awarded a Community Development Block Grant in the amount of $525,000 from the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. Although the grant funded part of the costs, the bulk of the funding to pay for it was appropriated from the city’s water and sewer fund surplus.
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