News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Monterey broke ground on its Water Resource Recovery Facility, the culmination of an over $13 million sewer system rehabilitation on Thursday.
Engineer Nathaniel Green said it has been an eight year road to reach this point. Green said that Monterey persisted through new state processes to receive $5.985 million in funding from USDA Rural Development.
“As far as this project, this is the largest grant that’s been given to a sewer department in the state of Tennessee in the last 10 years,” Green said. “And it’s for the town of Monterey and it’s for this sewer plant.”
Green said that Monterey was one of the first towns to sit down with state regulators and present its case for why it needed the plant. Green said that trips around the state and around the country to other plants played a key role in creating the most efficient design possible.
Green said it became apparent in 2015 and 2016 the current plant was not going to meet criteria set for Monterey to come off its state moratorium.
“The existing treatment plant that was built in the late 1980’s was not going to be able to meet the limits that TDEC was coming at us with,” Green said. “So during that time frame when we realized that we started coming up with a new engineering report that would take us to a new treatment plant.”
Green said that the current site is an active pumping station that sends 75% of everything to the current sewer plant. Green said that building on that site will create long term energy saving costs for Monterey.
