On December 2, 1993, the Willsboro Town Board awarded contracts for the construction of the Willsboro Sewer District #1 facilities, including the treatment plant and the collection system. Construction will start in the spring, but operation of the plant may be delayed until 1995 due to the extensive construction efforts needed to complete the systems and begin user hookups.
In addition, Willsboro and cooperating partners (Cornell University, Essex County Planning Office, and the Essex County Water Quality Coordinating Committee) submitted an application to the Lake Champlain Basin Program for evaluation and development of design requirements for a constructed wetland effluent polishing system. This continues efforts for installation of an artificial wetland to filter contaminants from the sewage after it has been processed at the treatment plant.
Evaluation research has already been completed by Cornell, on behalf of the town, on different filtering materials for use in the constructed wetland. Wollastonite, processed at the NYCO facility in Willsboro, has shown very positive results. The adsorption of phosphorus–a major pollutant in wastewater–by a filtering media containing wollastonite may dramatically improve the efficiency and cost effectiveness of phosphorus removal from sewage treatment plant effluent. The proposed grant project will further evaluate the concentration of adsorption material, flow rates through the media, size of substrate material, and potential disposal alternatives of the spent material.
If approved, this research will support additional funding applications to the NYS Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to actually construct a full-size wetland at the Willsboro Sewage Treatment Plant site.
Editor's Note: Artificial wetlands are just that: a construction that artificially approximates a wetland in order to allow waste removal properties of this ecological system to filter and polish the wastewater from a sewage treatment plant. They have proven successful in many areas of the U.S. and Canada by reducing phosphorus, BOD, suspended and total solids, fecal coliform, viruses, toxic organics, heavy metals, nitrogen and pathogens.
A new NYSDEC regulation requires treatment plants to initiate phosphorus removal processes (tertiary treatment) before renewal of their permit. Removing phosphorus by traditional physical/chemical processes is costly in labor and chemicals, in fact so expensive as to be beyond the resources of a small community such as Willsboro. Artificial wetlands are an intriguing possibility for this area because they may reduce phosphorus efficiently and economically without adding to the sludge disposal problems of our wastewater treatment plants.
Using a local waste product (tailings from wollastonite mining operations) as part of the wetland filtering/growing/distribution medium is also intriguing. Imagine, two waste products–treatment plant effluent and mine tailings–working together to improve water quality.