Quick fix of sewer woes eludes MC-area officials

Sending Middlesex County wastewater to distant treatment plants at Williamsburg and Yorktown is a long way off.

With costs escalating, the Hampton Roads Sanitation District (HRSD) will be looking at sending wastewater from Urbanna and Saluda to West Point and on to Toano, north of Williamsburg. This would eliminate Urbanna, Saluda, and West Point treatment plants, reported John “Jay” Dano, chief of planning and analysis at HRSD, to the Middlesex Board of Supervisors on May 6.

This Middle Peninsula Master Plan would require laying at least 30 miles of forced main pipes—19 miles from Urbanna to West Point along Routes 17 and 33, and then 11 miles to connect to the existing forced main in northern James City County. From there it would flow to HRSD’s Williamsburg Treatment Plant.

Ten years

Dano said it would take five years to connect the West Point lines to HRSD’s plant in Williamsburg.

Building a pipeline from the Urbanna and Saluda plants to connect to HRSD’s proposed pipe at West Point is a “minimum” of 10 years away, Dano said, adding that delivering sewer service to Deltaville will take even longer.

Plan paused

The line from Urbanna to West Point would be two miles longer than the line HRSD originally proposed in Middlesex.

At one point HRSD planned to build a 17-mile pipeline from Urbanna to Deltaville and cross under the Piankatank River to connect to HRSD’s existing force main in Mathews, which flows to Yorktown. This plan was “paused” by HRSD in June 2024 when the two bids received were 80% higher than estimated by HRSD. Each construction bid was nearly $82 million.

“On our own”

Pinetop District represen-tative Randy Crittenden, who represents Deltaville, commented during the meeting, “As far down in Deltaville, we’re kind of on our own… for my lifetime.”