The New York City Department of Environmental Protection is giving continued consideration to a new proposal for a wastewater treatment plant for the hamlet of Phoenicia.

The plan would use vegetated sand beds instead of the conventional concrete and chemical version that Phoenicia voters turned down two years ago.

Department of Environmental Protection Assistant Commissioner David Warne wrote, “While some outstanding issues related to the proposal still remain, DEP is nevertheless encouraged by the progress made in responding to our comment letter of December 10, 2008.”

The hamlet, which has been targeted for a sewer system since the mid-1990s, has received at least two extensions of deadlines imposed by the city agency. The most recent deadline, which was last December, was granted to allow Phoenicia to do a feasibility study for an alternative treatment system. The city, which is offering $17.2 million to build the hamlet a conventional system, then reviewed the alternative plan and refused to approve it.

In February, Richard Rennia of Rennia Engineering said the city supplied specific objections to that first proposal, developed last fall by Rennia’s firm. Rennia then amended that proposal to include all the elements the city thought missing. The size of the system was doubled and now includes the micro-filtration phase of treatment the city requires. As a result it will now cost as much to build the vegetated sand bed system as the old conventional one, but it is projected to cost much less to operate.

The conventional system would have cost an estimated $375,000 a year to run. Rennia’s system would cost an estimated $177,000 a year.

The town has been given until the end of the month to:

• Prove the system can remove ammonia and phosphorous.

• Prove the standby reed beds can be kept operational through all seasons.

• Provide more data on how the system would operate during peak flows and low flows.

• Show the calculations used to size the system.

Source: Daily Freeman