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CUC moves to update wastewater master plan
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Posted on Dec 16 2004
Faced with problems involving overflows and drinking water contamination, the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. has moved to update its over six-years-old wastewater master plan.
The CUC board of directors instructed the management in a meeting Tuesday to contact the Hawaii-based Duenas & Associates and see if the consulting firm would be interested in updating the wastewater plan it did for CUC back in the 1990s.
The CUC board voted unanimously to sole-source the update project, noting that it would be a lot more expensive to bid it out and hire another group to formulate a whole new plan.
CUC chair Francisco Guerrero said the board expects the planned update to cost less than $100,000. A new study, on the other hand, is estimated to cost over $300,000, he said.
“The wastewater plan that we have is outdated; it been more than six years since it was made. We need to update it to meet environmental regulations and requirements,” Guerrero said.
He said that the Agingan Point wastewater treatment facility was originally built to take in only about 3 million gallons of wastes a day. However, the increased volume of wastes being discharged by island residents now requires the plant to have a capacity of about 5 million gallons, Guerrero added.
“It’s causing a lot of problem with backflows and contamination of drinking water,” he said.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had earlier cited CUC for the faulty design of the Agingan facility’s existing pipeline.
Aside from the treatment facility problem, the CUC also faces major sewer problems, including recurring overflows in different villages on Saipan.
Based on previous citations by regulatory agencies such as the Division of Environmental Quality and the Coastal Resources Management, the recurring sewer problems are caused by poor system maintenance, possibly a design problem, and lack of facilities.
