Waste-load discharge regulations placed on Newcastle have limited the City’s ability to release treated water at the Newcastle Wastewater Treatment Plant. The problem: treated water releases must be allocated through the Oklahoma Water Resources Board, and several other area municipalities are looking for the same allocations.
Newcastle has a permit for releasing 1.5 million gallons of treated water into the South Canadian River. Other communities which have permits to discharge in the Canadian River include Oklahoma City, Tuttle, Mustang and Moore.
City Manager Kevin Self told the City Council that Newcastle participated in an allocation study through ACOG (Association of Central Oklahoma Governments) that said the current rate of discharge will not meet Newcastle’s future needs. He said the City can double the amount of discharge to 3 million gallons with the use of filtration. Any increase in discharge (design flow) must be offset by decreased concentration limits — or a balance of oxygen, ammonia and organic materials which are released.
Self said S2 Engineering was contracted by the City to determine whether or not the city’s waste-load allocation (discharge load) can be increased with or without greater filtration. An S2 Engineering representative was in attendance at the Council meeting and spoke about updating the City’s study.
He said an update to the study would take 90-120 days, and would have to go through a Department of Environmental Quality technical review, and then would be sent to Region 6 of the Environmental Protection Agency.
“Eventually, we will need that capacity,” Mayor Karl Nail said. “We don’t know what things will happen with the hospital and the turnpike.
“We need to look at what we think our demand will be and justify that to the ODEQ and the EPA over a 20-year period.
“We need to look deep into what our impacts will be to the community and to our long-term needs. We need to make sure we have some options with our discharge.
“It’s one more plan we’ve got to do with what is coming in our direction.”
Other City of Newcastle Water Projects
In other water-related news, Self said the City is beginning the purchase of a lot of different materials for the fresh water plant, and the City will be doing repairs there.
He said the City will also be replacing a 10” sewer line where the new turnpike alignment is, but the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority (OTA) will be paying for engineering, materials and construction costs.
The line will be replaced with a bigger line — an 18-inch line — and because of this, some costs will be paid by the City.
Nail said, “That line will handle everything out there down to State Highway 76. We will be able to sever the old line, and the new line will carry everything on the west side of I-44.”
He said with the uptick in work by the OTA on their project (ACCESS Oklahoma), the City will need to have its engineering done and have a bore in place before OTA severs the old bore with its construction.
Nail added that OTA has issued some bonds for ACCESS Oklahoma and they are ready to move forward.
“They’ll be updating the ACCESS Oklahoma website, and will be very transparent,” Nail said. “One of their first projects will be I-44 across the Canadian River, to somewhere around Sooner Road.”
