Uniontown: Lagoon repairs to start soon

The lowest bidder has all but been selected for the construction to quell the leaking of Uniontown’s three wastewater lagoons, according to the consulting engineer working on the project.

With the low bid of $1.7 million, MRM Construction out of Ellensburg is weeks away from signing their final contract to undertake the project.

Uniontown is paying for the remodeling through a $2.3 million forgivable loan, stimulus funds in the form of a grant, through the Department of Ecology.

Construction is expected to start this spring. The three city lagoons process an average of 24,000 gallons of wastewater per day, and between 17,000 to 22,000 gallons of that water was found to be leaking back into the ground in a 1998 study. The lagoons are lined with clay.

To repair the three lagoons, which cover about 10 acres, the first two will be lined with a layer of impermeable plastic, according to Andy Tom, a consulting engineer with James A. Sewell & Associates, the company working with the DOE on the lagoons.

The third lagoon will be shaped into a man-made wetland with a percolation system on the side. The wetland, which will include plants, will also be lined with the double layer of plastic.

“They’re leaking really badly,” Tom said in mid-summer interview with the Gazette. “Most of it that just seeps into the ground. I think that’s why the DOE was interested in providing for it,” he said.

The $2.3 million forgivable loan came out of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and is more or less a grant, said Cynthia Wall, municipal facility manager, of the DOE’s eastern region office. The DOE also offered a $435,000 loan to Uniontown, to be paid back over 20 years. However, because the recent bid of $1.7 million is so much lower than the $2.3 million forgivable loan, Uniontown may not need to take out the $435,000 loan.

Tom said because Uniontown draws its water from deep wells the town’s drinking water has not been impacted by the leaks in the surface lagoons.

A large population of turtles lives in the depths of the Uniontown lagoons, Tom said. He said he has an interest in relocating the turtles, but the final decision on relocation will be in the hands of the contractor, MRM.

Construction will begin next spring with crews draining the thousands of gallons out of the lagoons.