WithersRavenel prepared a Preliminary Engineering Report (PER) and Environmental Assessment (EA) report for the Town of Mount Olive’s wastewater treatment plant to secure grant funds to complete improvements to the WWTP.
The WWTP serves the Town of Mount Olive (Wayne County) and the Town of Calypso (Duplin County), with a total combined population of approximately 5,200 people. The WWTP is at the end of Wilkins Farm Road on the eastern side of town.
The WWTP equipment has a rated capacity of 2 million gallons per day (MGD) after the most recent upgrade completed in 2010. Treated wastewater from the plant is either discharged to the Northeast Cape Fear River under NPDES Permit No. NC0020575 or land applied on 145.5 acres of tree crop from a Non-Conjunctive Reclaimed Water Generation, Distribution and Utilization System under Permit No. WQ002916.
The design and permitting by WithersRavenel specifically addressed fixing the engineering and environmental problems that are necessary to ensure the plant will operate efficiently and meet all NPDES and Non-Discharge permitting requirements. Major improvements include replacing the existing reclaimed water drip irrigation system and hybrid sycamore tree crop with a spray system and coastal Bermuda grass crop, expanding the existing influent pump station capacity, improvements to the plant headworks, the installation of a Parshall flume effluent flow measuring structure, improvements to the irrigation, transfer, and influent pump stations, and a complete rebuild of two of the four existing tertiary filters.
The total grant the client received was for $5,500,000 and the total estimated construction cost is $4,510,000.
Construction of the project is ongoing, and WithersRavenel is providing construction administration and observation services.