WILTON — Work on the last pump station updated under phase one of the wastewater treatment system and plant upgrade is expected to be completed within three weeks.

“Of the 25 pump stations updated, 24 are done,” Clayton Putnam, wastewater superintendent, said.

This last station on Tannery Road, connecting Main Street with Route 2, requires installation of a new tank and is the most expensive of all the stations done, he said.

The town has 31 pump stations but 25 are vintage, installed with the initial system construction in 1978. At 35 years old, they have outlived their 20-year design life, he said.

The remaining pump stations were installed in the 1990s and didn’t need an overhaul, he said.

Upgrading the wastewater treatment plant, now 35 years old and beyond its 20-year design life, was split into two phases to spread out the costs.

The entire upgrade cost $9.5 million.

The Tannery Road station needs a new wet well, Nick Thompson, an engineer from Olver Associates of Winterport, said Tuesday.

Workers for Jordan Excavation of Kingfield are installing large trench boxes about 26 feet deep to allow them to safely put the pieces of the concrete tank together in the ground, Thompson said. When the job is done, the boxes will be pulled out, leaving the new tank, Putnam explained.

There may be some landscaping and paving in the spring to finish this first phase.

The department hopes to put Phase II out to bid this winter, with the goal of completing it by September 2014.

abryant@sunjournal.com

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