David Honeycutt, left, office manager for the McGill Associates office in Pinehurst, updates the Mount Olive Town Board during its Tuesday night session about $14 million in improvements to the town’s sewer system. The board approved about $1.7 million in engineering fees for the work that is being funded by state grants. At right is Carroll Turner, town attorney. (Steve Herring|mountolivetribune.com)
The Mount Olive Town Board Tuesday night approved slightly more than $1.7 million for engineering services for $14 million in upgrades and improvements to the town’s wastewater treatment plant and water collection system.
The engineering work was awarded to McGill Associates, P.A. of Raleigh.
The $1.7 million includes $735,000 for the N.C. Environmental Quality Division of Water Infrastructure Wastewater Treatment Plant Improvements Grant of $6 million.
It also includes $997,000 for the N.C. Environmental Quality Division of Water Infrastructure Collection System Rehabilitation and Replacement Grant of $8 million.
The cost and accompanying budget amendments were unanimously approved by the board following a brief presentation by David Honeycutt, office manager for the McGill office in Pinehurst.
Both projects are 100 percent grant funded, Honeycutt said.
As such, the grant covers the cost of engineering work, surveying, construction and administration, he explained.
“The first step is to work through the preliminary engineer report with the state and funding agency so we get more details of exactly what is being done,” he told town officials. “We will get alternatives and those kind of things from the report.”
The report should be competed about March 2023 and then the project will move into the design phase by the middle of next year, Honeycutt said.
From there it will move into the permitting phase, he pointed out. Permitting should be competed by the end of next year with the project going out to bid in late 2023 or early 2024.
Construction should start in early spring of 2024, he noted.
“It is about a 16-month process, and both projects are expected to have about the same construction period.”
The projects will complement work already nearing completion at the sewer plant, said Commissioner Barbara Kornegay, who made the motion to approved the engineering contract for the Collection System Rehabilitation and Replacement Grant.
The new spray field, where treated wastewater is applied, has been completed while work is continuing to adjust the spray heads to get them to the right spray radius, she said.
“They are running the spray heads regularly every day testing them and trying to get them right,” Kornegay explained. “The other part of that contract was to work and the filters and the pump and all those things that push the treated water out to the (spray) field.
“That is coming along well. We meet every week with the contractor. That project is going to be completed so that we can step into the next piece of the project.”
Over the past 50 years or so, Mount Olive’s troubled sewer system has cost thousands of dollars in state fines because of massive overflows, some exceeding 300,000 gallons that sometimes spill over into the headwaters of the Northeast Cape Fear River.
It also prompted the state to impose a moratorium on new sewer hook-ups.
The solution involves more than bringing the wastewater treatment plant up to standards.
The town also will have to address miles of underground lines — some more than 100 years old and made of terrcotta — that allow rainwater and groundwater into the sewer system.
Known as inflow and infiltration, or I&I, once the water enters the sewer system it has to be treated placing an added burden on an already strained system — particularity when heavy rains overpower the plant’s treatment capacity.
It adds to the cost of treatment as well.
Not only must the town bring its wastewater treatment plant up to standards it must replace the crumbling underground pipes to control I&I.
The $8 million Water Infrastructure Collection System Rehabilitation and Replacement Grant will be used to replace approximately 25,000 feet of old concrete pipes, Honeycutt said.
Parts of both the sewer plant and pipe rehabilitation replacement projects probably will overlap some depending on the pace of the design and permitting process, Honeycutt said.
The I&I work probably will be completed before the sewer plant project, Honeycutt said.
The improvements that will be made should move the town in the direction of getting out from under the state-mandated moratorium that prohibits the addition of new sewer hookups.
However, McGill is not directly part of the discussions between the town and the state on the moratorium and how that process is working, Honeycutt noted.
“There will be substantial improvement to get the town in the right direction,” he said.
