Spencerport sewer project on track, village mayor reports

There may be a few stalling points in some parts of the phases of the Spencerport village sewer project but it continues to move forward, Spencerport Mayor Ted Walker said.

"We awarded the last three contracts for the pump station work in the last couple of days and that site work will begin in July," he said. "Crews are working on the buried main and the gravity sewer portions of the project."

The pump station work involves the construction of a single story masonry building to house the pumps, backup generator and odor abatement equipment that would be part of the project.

Crews ran into some obstacles in the forced main portion of the project. That portion involved boring under the canal. "We started working on that while the canal was empty but ran into obstructions that couldn't be overcome. That part of the project will resume when the canal is drained at the end of the season," Walker said.

The phases of the project included installing a gravity sewer system, installing five miles of forced main pipes and installing the pump station.

The project was undertaken once village officials decided to take its wastewater treatment plant off line and turn the operation over to the Monroe County Pure Waters. Walker said it would be more cost effective in the long term. "Even in the short term it is cheaper to go off-line than to upgrade the existing plant."

Upgrading the facility would cost about $11 million while going off-line and turning the operation over to Pure Waters will cost about $8 million, according to village officials. "The potential impact from going off-line could be approximately $500 per unit annually," Walker said.

The project is expected to wrap up in the second or third quarter of 2008.

June 17, 2007