Upgrades coming to Pease wastewater plant

The Pease Wastewater Treatment Facility is located at 135 Corporate Drive. (Photo by Deb Cram, Seacoastonline)

The city’s Pease Wastewater Treatment Facility rehabilitation project has received a key endorsement.

The Planning Board voted unanimously to recommend both site plan approval for the project, and the granting of a Conditional Use Permit for work within the wetland buffer. The estimated cost of the Pease wastewater facility upgrade is $25 million, according to a city project document.

The existing wastewater plant is located off Corporate Drive in the Pease International Tradeport, and is operated by the city’s Department of Public Works.

Because the site is part of the Tradeport — owned by the Pease Development Authority — the Planning Board can only make recommendations about the project, which it did at its July 17 meeting.

The Pease Development Authority’s board of directors will make the final decision about whether to approve the project, according to city officials.

The funding sources for the project are Portsmouth Sewer Bonded monies and the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services State Revolving Fund, according to the city project document.

This project is currently in the design phase and “construction is anticipated to take approximately two years,” according to the document.

The existing facility will remain in operation throughout construction, according to the city project document.

The treatment plant began operating in 1954 when the Tradeport was the Pease Air Force Base, according to project documents filed by Altus Engineering, which is working with the city on the project.

The proposed treatment plant upgrade includes “construction of four new buildings on the parcel,” including a new primary sludge pump station, new electrical/control building, new chemical storage building and an expansion of the existing lab/administration building, according to project documents.

The rehabilitation project also calls for “razing the existing control operations building, and implementing stormwater management on the site, where there is none now, according to project documents.

Other site improvements include installing new utilities to each of the buildings, new piping to support the facilities treatment operations, a new generator and “new parking and access ways,” according to project documents.

But city officials stressed the project is an upgrade of the current plant, but it doesn’t increase treatment capacity.

Planning Board member William Bowen asked if in “some distant future if the Federal Aviation Administration decides that maybe it’s okay to have housing at Pease … does this facility and this upgrade have the capacity and the technology to handle 100 to 200 housing units.”

City engineer Erich Fiedler explained that “this project specifically addresses reliability and redundancy at the facility itself.”

“It doesn’t expand capacity,” he added. Fiedler, who helped present the project to the board at their recent meeting, said the project is “maintaining existing capacity and making sure we have … sufficient allocation for industrial users … or limited industrial growth.”

“It doesn’t account for future housing developments, things like that,” he said.

Initial discussions about the project included expectations that “an industrial user was going to request additional treatment capacity,” Fielder said. “But that was changed and this is basically just reliability, just refreshing old aging infrastructure.”

Bowen also asked if the project “will be enough to handle Lonza and their contracts and expansion plans.”

Fiedler replied “yes” and stated that “their expansion is using different manufacturing processes that require less wastewater.”

“The primary driver of their waste stream is actually cleaning practices, and their new facilities are not using the old style … cleaning processes,” he said.

Plus, Fiedler explained, Lonza has “a corporate policy on managing their environmental sustainability.”

“So they’re reusing water, they’re recycling and they’re limiting discharges to the waste treatment systems,” he said.

Lonza and Vertex broke ground on a new medical manufacturing facility in late summer 2023 at the Tradeport that could lead to the creation of 300 jobs and a potential cure for Type 1 diabetes.

Eric Weinrieb, the president of Altus Engineering, stated that the city’s Conservation Commission had already recommended approval of both the site plan and Conditional Use Permit.

“We’re looking for your endorsement to go back to the PDA,” he said before the Planning Board also endorsed both approvals.