Dr. Larry Walker – Serious About Service

The ECUA’s Central Water Reclamation Facility project involves several major components, each of which will be a boon to the Escambia County economy at a time when, as it turns out, it will be sorely needed. Components include the following:

1. Construction of a new wastewater treatment facility north of the Solutia plant
2. Construction of a 25-mile-long raw-sewage pipeline from downtown Government Street to the new plant site
3. Construction of two effluent pipelines between the CWRF and Gulf Power’s Crist Plant
4. Construction of an effluent pipeline from the CWRF to International Paper (IP) at Cantonment
5. Construction, jointly by ECUA and IP, of an effluent pipeline from IP to the Rainwater Tract wetlands south of Mobile Highway at Beulah Road
6. Clearing of hundreds of acres of land and extensive earth moving on the ECUA’s 2,300 acres of land north of Solutia
7. Construction of a half-dozen or more major lift stations to push raw sewage toward the new plant
8. Retrofitting of dozens of existing lift stations in order to redirect their flow
9. Construction of a new office building at Ellyson Park
10. Construction of a new scientific laboratory at Ellyson Park
11. Last but not least, demolition of the Main Street Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Total cost of the CWRF project (or, the Main Street replacement project) is estimated at $300 million. Allmost all of this huge amount of money will be spent in 2008, 2009, and the first few half of 2010. Given the current recession and the threat that this recession may linger and perhaps even worsen, the ECUA CWRF project will be a powerful counterforce in the greater Escambia County community to the current and near-future recession. This huge infusion of money into the local economy could not come at a better time!