McCandless Township Sanitary Authority celebrates Earth Day, upgrades to Pine Creek treatment facility

Flushing the potty will never be the same for 7-year-old Aria St. Onge.

Aria and her dad, Joseph St. Onge of Richland, were among residents, officials and authority members who celebrated Earth Day on April 22 with a tour of McCandless Township Sanitary Authority’s Pine Creek wastewater treatment facility.

“She wanted to know where our water came from and where it went,” Joseph St. Onge said.

The authority was marking the end of a $20.7 million upgrade of the facility, which included replacing its chlorination system with an ultraviolet light disinfection system.

“We no longer use chlorine at any of our plants to disinfect,” authority Executive Director Bill Youngblood said. “We’re not putting chlorine into the streams.”

The authority’s single largest asset, the Pine Creek facility treats sewage from more than 12,500 customers in Bradford Woods, Franklin Park, Marshall, Pine, McCandless and the boundaries of Hampton.

When it was built between 1973 and 1975, it could handle 3 million gallons per day. Its capacity doubled to 6 million gallons per day when it was enlarged and upgraded in 1991.

The authority began planning for the facility’s latest upgrade in 2016, and contracts were awarded in 2022. The improvements allowed for ultraviolet disinfection to replace the chlorination system, which had at times proven to be inadequate.

The project’s cost came in 30% higher than anticipated, in part because of the pandemic, according to the authority.

State Sen. Lindsey Williams helped the authority obtain $500,000 through the state’s pandemic response grant program, which went toward the $3 million equipment and installation cost of the ultraviolet disinfection system.

Retired state Rep. Mike Turzai had helped the authority get another $500,000 grant, which went toward the construction of a new blower and electrical control building.

Williams attendedthe tour at the Pine Creek facility.

“I was so glad to support a $500,000 grant for MTSA to put toward going chlorine-free and using ultraviolet light to sanitize their sewage treatment facility water,” she said. “This means that no toxic byproducts enter our waterways and continue to the downstream communities.

“Investing in water and stormwater infrastructure has been a big priority for me since I took office. These projects protect every single one of us by providing us with clean, safe drinking water; protecting our rivers and streams; and keeping our infrastructure up to date, which means fewer landslides and roadway issues.”

It takes eight hours for wastewater entering the facility to get out. It releases, on average, 2,400 gallons per minute into Pine Creek.

Jim and Jude Garcia of McCandless came for the tour. Jim said he’d always been curious about the facility, and his wife follows Williams online.

Jim Garcia said he and his wife have been involved in Earth Day since high school, when they were let out of school to pick up litter.

“From the time I was a little kid, I recycled. I’ve had recycling in my blood,” he said. “This is a form of recycling.”

He was impressed by what he saw.

“It’s ingenious, it really is, when you think of how dirty the water is when it comes in here and it’s clean enough to put in a stream,” he said.