Reading City Council Moves On Plan To Fix Aging Sewer System

Map of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States with township and municipal boundaries (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The administration and City Council on Monday revved up the plan to fix the city’s estimated 170 miles of sanitary sewer pipe, awarding an $847,747 contract to a firm just to oversee other contractors’ investigations of what’s wrong.

Hazen & Sawyer, Philadelphia, will use the voluminous data coming in from those other probes to build a computer model of the pipe system, assess where its problems are and what repairs are needed, and evaluate which areas will need more capacity in coming years.

“It’s important to have a firm that can handle the data,” Deborah A.S. Hoag, city utility systems manager, told council members.

She said the data coming from other contractors – who have built a special map of the system and televised and smoke-tested many of the pipes – is phenomenally huge.

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Reading CIty Council Awards $5.35 Million Contract To Rebuild Fritz’s Island

Map of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States with township and municipal boundaries (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Reading City Council voted unanimously Monday to award a $5.35 million contract to design the rebuilding of the city’s wastewater treatment plant on Fritz’s Island.

“It’s taken us awhile to get here,” Mayor Vaughn D. Spencer said. “We’re on the way to making some good progress.”

The contract was awarded to York-based RK&K Inc., the winner after the city weeded out six other firms during what Managing Director Carole B. Snyder called an extensive review process.

Public Works Director Charles M. Jones and plant manager Ralph Johnson said the rebuilding project is expected to cost about $101 million.

Read more:  http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=471552

Reading City Council Approves Smaller Sewage Plant

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Berks County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Customers who use Reading’s sewage treatment plant on Fritz’s Island, and who will pay for a major overhaul that will begin soon, got some potential good news Monday.

Construction costs could be cut by up to $20 million if the state gives the go-ahead to a smaller plant that City Council approved Monday.

The U.S. Department of Environmental Protection not only approved the smaller plant in mid-September, it also extended the deadline to build it to 2018. The previous deadline was last month.

“It could mean less money that we’d have to go out and try to get (for the project),” Mayor Vaughn D. Spencer said.

Read more: http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=419670

Reading City Council Agrees To Hire 12 Probationary Police Officers

City Council on Monday agreed to hire 12 probationary police officers to get the police force, gutted by retirements, up to its authorized strength of 168 officers.

The new probationers, who entered the Reading Police Academy earlier in the day, are in addition to about two-dozen new officers who just completed or are still in field training.

But even those won’t be enough to keep the force at full strength, with more retirements expected this year, much less get the force back to the more than 200 officers it had several years ago.

Meanwhile, council awarded a design contract as the city gets started on replacing the first equipment at the wastewater treatment plant on Fritz’s Island, required by state and federal environmental agencies in 2004 as part of a court-ordered consent decree.

Read more: http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=402193

State OKs $10 Million Loan To Reading For New Sewer Main

Editor’s note:  Every community downstream is thankful!

The state has approved a $10 million low-interest loan to Reading from its PennVest program to help the city build a new 8,700-foot sewer main from the Sixth and Canal streets pumping station across the Schuylkill River and to the treatment plant on Fritz’s Island.

Officials also announced Wednesday that the state has approved a nearly $2 million grant to the Berks County Conservation District to help four dairy farms keep manure from polluting storm water runoff before it reaches local streams.

Read more: http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=382102