Onondaga County is under a court order to replace a very large and occasionally leaky sewage pipe. The county already faces $100,000 in fines for spilling sewage directly into Onondaga Lake.
The more than two mile-long, 42-inch diameter pipe is called the Ley Creek Force Main. It carries sewage under pressure from 7th North Street in Liverpool to the metropolitan wastewater treatment plant near Destiny USA. But the 50-year-old pipe ruptured twice this summer along the railroad bridge over Onondaga Creek, sending tens of thousands of gallons of untreated sewage into Onondaga Lake. That violates state environmental laws. The county’s Commissioner of Water Environment Protection Shannon Harty told county lawmakers Thursday a complete replacement is an expensive, years-long process.
“There's a lot of environmental permits. There's coordination with CSX, there's coordination with private property owners," Harty said. "Everybody knows the land and around on the lake is a very unique situation. And and it's not easy to build on. So installing a large diameter force main is complicated.”
Harty says the state’s most recent consent order adds urgency, and opens to the door to funding sources.
“It is very different than the original consent order because the other consent order didn't require construction, so we couldn't use that to leverage funding," Harty said. "This consent order is part of the schedule of compliance to submit to them our scheduled timeline of when we're going to complete that construction.”
The consent order means the county has to make the repairs or face daily fines. The $25 million first phase starts at the Ley Creek Pump Station next spring and moves toward Destiny USA. The second phase doesn’t yet have a price tag, but Harty says is much more involved.
“We're going to actually abandon the two existing pipes, and now we're going to be building a new single pipe," Harty said. "But it has to be micro tunneled and so that's a pretty significant geotechnical undertaking. It's a complex design. It's going to be routed through the Destiny property.”
Harty says the troubled section of pipe that hangs on the railroad bridge will be removed and re-routed over the creek on a new bridge. It could link to the adjacent creekwalk and include a pedestrian crossing. There’s no estimate on when the project will be completed. County lawmakers vote on the plan in early December.
