CAPE MAY — City Manager Paul Dietrich reported Nov. 3 that Cape May has moved closer to approval of its new desalination plant after securing a permit from the Department of Environmental Protection.
Still pending is a Coastal Area Facility Review Act permit.
Mayor Zack Mullock said it was excellent news. The city is in the process of replacing its plant to help deal with the overwhelming demand on the resource, especially during the heavy tourism months.
Councilman Steve Bodnar said in February that the city partnered with the Columbia University Sustainability Management Program to research sustainable solutions for water needs and environmental protection.
The city’s consultants are lining up grants and loans to replace the plant, a project with a price tag in the range of $36 million to $40 million. The plant was built to address saltwater intrusion into the city’s aquifers.
Dietrich said the city has received a number of grants for the project, including principal forgiveness from the New Jersey Infrastructure Bank in the amount of $8 million, $2 million from the Department of the Interior and a $500,000 Army Corps of Engineers Water Resource Development Act (WRDA) award. Another WRDA is anticipated in the amount of $9.5 million.
“We will continue to work to get additional grant funding,” he said.
Project manager Mike Dziubeck, of Consulting and Municipal Engineers, told City Council last December that the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) was worried about a capacity shortfall for the current plant. The reverse osmosis system uses two units referred to as “trains.”
“There is no redundancy in the trains; if one of the trains were to go out of service during a peak day, there would be issues with that treatment plant meeting the water demands of the city,” he said.
The plant is inside the city’s waterworks building, which was built around 1926. Plans call for the building to be preserved and a new plant built in what is now a parking lot. The new plant would use technology similar to the current facility, Dziubeck said, adding that it would need a train for desalination and another to remove iron from the water.
In September, City Council introduced a $350,000 bond ordinance and companion resolution providing for improvements to the water treatment system.
Dietrich said the water desalination plant continues to get a little bit worse.
“Every year, we go through a process where we repurchase the reverse osmosis filters, do a deep clean, backwash them and kind of refresh them in the off-season for the upcoming summer season,” Dietrich said. “The repurchase that we did last year barely made it through the spring, and that barely made it through two weeks ago.”
Dietrich said the filters are not going to make it through to next summer. Repurchasing the filters now will allow the city to replace them during this off-season.
“We need to do this in time, because you have to turn half the plant down, switch them out, and bring it back up,” Dietrich said.
The emergency appropriation allowed the city to forgo the formal bidding process.
“I don’t want to wait until the new budget year and then try to squeeze them in before the summer season,” he said. “What’s happening [now] is the pressures are building up, and it’s putting a large strain on the internal system. I still need to produce some water for city residents and my users.”
Dietrich said the city anticipates starting the two- to three-year construction process next year.
By RACHEL SHUBIN/Special to the Star and Wave
