Last of Fort Worth’s abandoned wastewater treatment plant being razed soon

The last phase of cleanup of pollution and of the demolition of the city’s long-shuttered east side wastewater treatment plant is slated to begin by the end of the month, closing a process that began about two decades ago and a 93-year-old chapter of Fort Worth history.

Tuesday, the City Council is scheduled to approve spending $7.7 million to hire Lindamood Demolition to complete the final two phases of work at the former Riverside Wastewater Treatment Plant.

That work includes tearing down the remaining relics of the wastewater plant and removing the last of the contaminated soil from the former sludge lagoons on the south and east sides of the site, the areas once used to remove water from organic materials.

Total cost of the project that began in 2002 will come to about $20 million. The site is south of East First Street and east of Beach Street, along the West Fork of the Trinity River. The area has become an integral part of the city’s park system and the greater Trinity River Vision project of hike and bike trail systems connecting North Texas cities.

Stacy Walters, the water department’s regulatory-environmental coordinator overseeing the project’s last phase, said work should begin by the end of March and take as long as 10 months to complete. Freese and Nichols engineering firm in Fort Worth, which built the facility, is a consultant on its demolition.

“This has been a long project,” Walters said.

The abandoned Riverside Plant, which cost $871,384 to build, opened in 1924 treating 7.5 million gallons of sewage daily, according to the city. Its opening, though, was pivotal to Fort Worth’s growth. At that time, Fort Worth joined few other major cities that were completely treating its sewage, according to reports.

The Riverside plant closed in 1979 when its operations finished transitioning to the Village Creek Water Reclamation Plant in far east Fort Worth. Construction on that facility began in the mid-1950s. Village Creek now serves 23 communities and is designed to treat 166 million gallons of sewage daily.

Efficient use of funds

John Carman, the city’s water director, who took over the post two years ago, said initial plans were to complete the final phases in increments over a few years, spending $1 million to $2 million at a time. Those plans had been placed on the back burner during the Great Recession and as the city worked through some other budget restraints.

That meant the last of the work couldn’t be completed until now. Carman said doing the final phases incrementally was an inefficient use of money. Instead, adjustments were made in the department’s operations and maintenance budget to see the work through all at once, he said.

It also means the land can be put back to use much sooner, he said.

“Just for the contractor to move a trailer out there and get equipment on site is a few hundred thousand dollars,” Carman said. “It will be nice to have this whole project done.”

The 143-acre Riverside site was re-platted into Gateway Park in 1988, and some of the site has already been turned into soccer, rugby and softball fields. The remaining land will come under the purview of the Park and Recreation Department once this latest work is completed. According to the city’s Gateway Park Master Plan, the site eventually could house an amphitheater.

By 2002, the city discovered the soil at the site was contaminated with PCB’s, or polychlorinated biphenals, chemicals used in coolants, electronics and hydraulic fluids, as well as heavy metals. PCB’s were banned in the 1970s after tests showed they can cause cancer. The playing fields were closed and reopened after the contamination was encapsulated under heavy-duty plastic liners and artificial turf. Monitoring the site has continued since 2004.

The city determined the contamination was coming from the aircraft plant in west Fort Worth, which opened during World War II, and built up over the years. In 2009, the city settled with the Air Force for $4.8 million.

About $12 million has been spent already to cleanup the site, done under a voluntary cleanup program through the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. In 2013, contaminated soil was still being removed from a section of the plant and last summer, the city removed asbestos from caulking and steam pipes still on site.

Buildings coming down

In this last phase, the structures, including the old pump house, will be torn down. Some materials will be recycled, but the rest will be broken down, buried and the land graded, Walters said. The site will be raised about 100 feet with new dirt, she said.

About a dozen former sludge lagoons will be completely scraped and the soil taken to EPA-approved landfills, Walters said. The land will be graded in part with clean dirt from land on the west side of Beach Street being dug for a holding area for flood waters by the Tarrant Regional Water District.

Richard Zavala, the city’s Park and Recreation Department director, called the last cleanup phases significant, not only for the expansion of Gateway Park, but the sheer size of the project. Plans for the park will not be completed immediately, but prioritized among all the department’s projects, he said.

“It can’t be understated,” Zavala said of the project’s significance. “This is another step in the legacy of a metropolitan park.”

This article contains information from the Star-Telegram archives

This story was originally published March 3, 2017 at 2:03 PM with the headline "Last of Fort Worth’s abandoned wastewater treatment plant being razed soon."