The Caesars Lane Wastewater Treatment Plant in New Windsor, which dates back to 1974, seeks repairs and upgrades following a half-century since construction. The plant’s construction and remediation has been a collaborative effort between the town, MHE Engineering, the New Windsor Water and Sewer Departments and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and other state agencies.

Town Supervisor George Meyers and the town board welcomed engineers from MHE Engineering on Wednesday, June 7 to speak on the process of the plant’s reconstruction. Jamison Zajac, P.E. provided a brief overview to the public with regards to the process.

“We [MHE] are currently undergoing the design and permitting for the wastewater treatment plant expansion located on Caesars Lane. In 2017, there in the New York State DEC permitting process for their state pollution discharge elimination system, or SPDES permit, the DEC gave us, gave the town, new effluent limits for the wastewater. So in order to evaluate the ability of the existing plant to achieve the compliance levels, our firm had to do sampling along with the town and some preliminary analysis,” said Zajac.

The purpose of the conducted testing, according to Zajac, was to ensure the existing infrastructure of the current plant met the compliance requirements of the DEC. The Caesars Lane plant is one of three water plants that operate within the town. The other two are located along Riley Road and Forge Hill Road.

“Over the last five, six years, we’ve been analyzing the effluence of the plant, the plant infrastructure, as well as these new limits, to see if we need to make some improvements,” said Zajac. “In 2018, and 2019, the plant actually exceeded 95% of its permanent monthly average flow capacity for both years, and that right now was five million gallons per day. So again, 95% of the time the plant was exceeding those treatment capacities.”

Further investigation by MHE discovered that the existing infrastructure of the plant did not have the design capabilities to meet the limits of the effluent discharge. Zajac continued his presentation with a map that shows the existing plant and its neighbor, the Butter Hill subdivision. Zajac noted that less than 100 feet of tree clearing would be conducted which conclude at the base of the hill, new administration and work buildings and treatment tanks would be built.

The project has been projected to be $60 million, but a $15 million dollar grant acquired from New York State has helped with the costs, which now brings the project to $45 million.

“The new plant will have all of the updates that we need to have and will treat the wastewater the way it should be treated,” said Meyers.