Aug. 10, 2003 — The sewage treatment plants located in Old and New Tutu have been taken off-line and are no longer accepting wastewater, Public Works Commissioner Wayne D. Callwood has reported.
The recently constructed, state-of-the-art Turpentine Run Mangrove Lagoon treatment plant has taken over the operation.
Construction on the Turpentine Run Mangrove Lagoon plant, first proposed in 1984 and the subject of many hearings and environmental studies, began early in 2001. (See "Mangrove sewage plant soon to be operational".) When the plant neared readiness earlier this year, Sonia Nelthropp, Public Works special assistant said the laying of 60 miles of new pipe to transfer five East End areas from smaller plants to the Mangrove plant is "about a five-year project. We are working on it seven days a week."
The Mangrove plant is a Sequencing Batch Reactor wastewater treatment plant, the first to be built in the Caribbean region, said a release from the Governor's Office. It was designed to replace five individual plants — Old Tutu, New Tutu, Donoe, Bovoni and Nadir.
The Nadir plant has been demolished, the New and Old Tutu plants are being drained and will be demolished shortly, and the Donoe plant was closed when that housing community was vacated. The Bovoni treatment plant is used as a holding tank, the release said, with no active treatment taking place there.
"Over the years residential areas have been built up around [the Old and New Tutu] plants, which has caused odor distress to the neighboring residents due to the state of disrepair that had befallen the plants," Callwood said in the release. Now residential sewage will be sent by "force mains and gravity lines" to the Mangrove plant.
For more information call Stella M. Saunders, waste management information coordinator at Public Works at 773-1290, Ext. 2224.
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