Construction begins on Uniontown lagoons

The first of three lagoons lies in the spring sun outside the south-county town of Uniontown. A six-inch layer of human feces lies at the bottom and will be dredged up when construction on the lagoons is in full swing this summer.

Construction workers will begin clearing away vegetation and a thin film of topsoil in a dry lagoon outside Uniontown April 1, the first step in a $2.3 million state project to plug up the city’s leaking lagoons.

Over the next six months, workers funded on a state loan will first drain the 10-acre patch of leaking wastewater lagoons and then re-line them with impermeable plastic.

The project has been in the works for years, after the state Department of Ecology conducted studies showing the lagoons were seeping most of Uniontown’s wastewater directly into the ground.

The old lagoons were lined with a soft clay when they were originally constructed. The first two of the three current 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.

Because the first two lagoons leak so much water, the third lagoon has been dry for years, according to Andy Tom, a consulting engineer with James A. Sewell and Associates, the company working with the DOE on the Uniontown project.

To repair the three lagoons, which cover about 10 acres, the first two will be lined with a layer of impermeable plastic.

Those lagoons feed into the third lagoon, which is currently dry. The third lagoon, which is the last lagoon to process the wastewater, will be shaped into a wetland with a percolation system.

Workers from MGM Construction out of Ellensburg will begin clearing out the vegetation and topsoil in that dry, third lagoon.

Throughout this week, workers will work to string power out to the construction site. The liner material for the lagoons is already stockpiled at the site, Tom said.

To line the first two lagoons, workers plan on pumping the thousands of gallons of water into the third lagoon.

A 10-foot-high fence with a barbed-wire trim will be erected around the entire lagoon area to keep out deer, Tom said. It will replace the current six-foot fence.

Total price tag on the project is estimated at $2.3 million by the DOE office. Uniontown has received two loans from the DOE to pay for the lagoons; a $2,081,000 forgivable loan stemming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (essentially a grant), and a $216,000 regular loan with a 1.1 percent interest rate.

Cynthia Wall, municipal facility manager of the DOE’s eastern region office, said the city will be pulling from that $216,000 loan as they need it, meaning they may not end up drawing out the full amount.