Monterey Wastewater Doing Well At New Facility

The Monterey Wastewater Plant operations much improved now that the all-new treatment facility is operational.

Supervisor Tim Hedgecough said workers are still trying to get the microorganisms in the plant to the levels needed. Hedgecough said the plant is much bigger than the previous one and is capable of handling up to four times as much water each day.

“It just does a lot better job,” Hedgecough said. “We’re going to have a phosphorous limit on us and it can, we can remove phosphorous here where we’d had to add chemicals before. We can use a, just a natural way of getting rid of it so that (will) be a lot better and just a lot cheaper on the city that way too.”

Hedgecough said the only real disadvantage of the new plant is that it requires a lot more maintenance. He said the plant will provide more tax revenue to the town by removing the state moratorium that had been placed on the town.

“We’ll be able to add more sewer taps and more industrial, anything come to town, we’ll have capacity to do it now,” Hedgecough said.

Hedgecough said he spoke with the supervisor of the water plant about hiring one additional employee who would work part-time at both facilities. Hedgecough said they are now using an Aero-Mod plant that works completely differently from the former trickle-filter plant, which had been outdated for several decades.

“We had to do something and with the design of the old one you couldn’t really do nothing to add to it,” Hedgecough said.

Hedgecough said they seeded the plant with supplies from the Cookeville Wastewater Plant to speed up the development of their microorganisms.

“It would take probably six weeks or longer naturally and with that it can happen, you know, in just a couple of weeks,” Hedgecough said.

Hedgecough said the new facility should last at least twenty-five years before it would need to be expanded or improved upon.

“The way it’s built, really you don’t have to add any bigger tanks or anything,” Hedgecough said.