New Hanover County to Build New Water Treatment Facilities

Staring out at a patch of empty, flat dirt that will become New Hanover County's new construction debris recycling pad, Joe Suleyman smiled

"This is going to be great," said Suleyman, the county's director of environmental management.

With the commissioners on Monday giving the thumbs up to a $552,664 contract with Port City Builders, the pad should be finished by January, he said.

Suleyman said contractors who throw all manner of debris into containers can bring it to the site to be sorted and re-used instead of having it sit, useless, under layers of trash in a landfill.

"Those materials, nearly all of it has a potential for beneficial re-purpose," he said.

While the recycled material is available for purchase by contractors, that new revenue stream isn't why the county is investing in the debris pad, he said. Rather, it's to keep that bulky material out of the landfill -- meaning longer periods before the county has to spend money to cap one landfill cell and build another at the site off U.S. 421 North.

"Our interest is in reducing the amount that ends up in the landfill," Suleyman said. "That's number one."

Construction of the pad will happen simultaneously with the construction of a new water treatment plant required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The county already has a treatment facility that removes most contaminants from runoff -- or leachate -- that drains from landfill cells before it is discharged into the Northeast Cape Fear River.

The system works fine to remove biological contaminants, but doesn't remove the arsenic, zinc, cyanide, chromium and selenium -- so-called heavy metals -- that the EPA recently said must be removed from leachate if it is discharged into a body of water.

"At the stroke of a pen, this system became obsolete," Suleyman said while standing on a platform above the treatment facility.

On Monday, the commissioners approved a $3.1 million contract with Turner Murphy Company, Rock Hill, S.C., to begin construction. When the new system is in place this summer, "the water discharged from here will be cleaner than the river itself," Suleyman said. "This will be as close to drinking water as we can get it."

As those projects begin, a project to rebuild the county's recycling center is nearing completion. Featuring more automated systems to handle recycled household paper, metals, cardboard and other goods, the project should be finished by January, Suleyman said.

The projects will have no impact on county tipping fees, Suleyman said.

Source: Star News Online

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• Industrial Water Treatment
• Water Recycling
• Water Treatment Plant Design