Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Whitman County Public Works has decided to halt work on the new effluent tanks at the Solid Waste transfer station until next year.
Cold weather precludes further welding on the liner of the evaporation pond.
Needing temperatures of 40 degrees or higher for the task, contractor M.A. DeAtley of Clarkston will hold off until spring.
Construction of the two tanks and evaporation pond began in August.
Public Works Director Mark Storey estimates the work is now 95 percent done with just the liner welding remaining and installation of a cover to keep rainwater and snow out in the winter.
The tanks and pond will be used to evaporate contact water seven months per year, from May to October.
The project, which will replace an old evaporation pond with two 10,000 gallon tanks, started with prep work in July by county road department workers who razed the original pond.
The total cost is $574,000, paid for by the county’s capital improvements fund.
The two steel tanks take the place of a 90x90 foot, 180,000-gallon pond which served to evaporate all water amidst garbage drained off from the floor of the waste transfer station.
Because the old pond’s lower liner was nearly 20 years old, its quality and integrity could not be guaranteed, which prompted the need for the replacement. Because the old pond lacked a cover, much of the process involved rainwater which was not required to undergo the evaporation process.
The new tanks are being built at the site of the old pond. All the contact water was pumped out and evaporated at the start of constrution.
The new, mostly underground tanks will collect water from the garbage deck to later be evaporated from a new 14x32-foot covered pond or to be pumped to a tanker truck and taken to the wastewater treatment plant at Colfax.
Ideally, all of the contact water will be evaporated in the new pond.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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