Sewage flow from manhole raises concern

Hampton Roads Sanitation District (HRSD) Director of Small Communities Sam McAdoo addressed the Urbanna Town Council last week about concerns regarding sewage overflow occurring last month in the Bonner and Linden streets area.

Rain on March 17 caused water to flow from a sewer manhole, a town citizen reported to the town council last month. HRSD estimated 4.1 inches of rain fell in nine hours and is equal to a storm that occurs only every 10-15 years, according to McAdoo, who for three years has been director of HRSD’s Small Communities Division, which serves Urbanna, Saluda, Mathews and West Point.

Stormy nightingale

Ricky Longest who lives on Bonner Street said earlier that the water and wastewater have overflowed into his yard from a wastewater manhole a few times for years.

“This was not a one in 15 year [rain] occurrence,” Longest said during the April 24 town council meeting to HRSD’s McAdoo. “What are you going to do about it?”

Mayor Bill Goldsmith stopped Longest from commenting further during the meeting.

McAdoo didn’t go into details on plans to mitigate the overflow. Earlier he had explained that stormwater can get into the wastewater pipes through cracks. Parts of Urbanna’s collection system are very old, he added. “Inflow and infiltration are a battle,” McAdoo told council.

A matter of size

The collection system was “completely overwhelmed” during the storm. He said the wastewater collection pipes must be sized so that the wastewater flows at a certain velocity and not stagnate. With a bigger pipe, the wastewater flows too slow. A smaller pipe can’t handle large amounts of stormwater. “You can’t design for everything,” McAdoo told council.

The Longests’ home is near the lowest elevation manhole in Urbanna, explained McAdoo during the meeting.

Plan

After council’s meeting, responding to emailed questions from the Sentinel, McAdoo replied: “We have a current Capital Improvement Project, which is scheduled to go out to bid by mid-August to address several manholes in the upstream collection system which have been identified as potential sources for [stormwater] inflow and infiltration into the collection system. We are also upgrading all the pump stations in Urbanna with a new communication and control system which will provide greater monitoring data and provide system notifications to improve upon the current monitoring and alarm system used in the Urbanna collection system.”