Aging Newmarket plant presents stinky situation

摘要

Take a tour of the town of Newmarket, N.H.'s wastewater treatment plant on Young Lane, and it almost feels like you are going back in time. The plant, built in 1969 with a planned life of 20 years, according to Sean Greig, town water and sewer superintendent, features a dizzying array of pipes, pumps, patches, a press for readying sludge for the landfill, and two domes that house trickling filters, helping clean the wastewater before release into the Lamprey River. Greig and a crew of four other workers run both the aging wastewater plant and the town's water system. With the aging wastewater system, they often must cobble together fixes when parts that are no longer manufactured break. It is common, he said, to have to fix aging parts or figure out different ways to make systems work themselves, because they cannot get the parts to replace broken ones.