Our Water Resources Department has made tremendous progress on some system projects, starting with the completion of Frog Level Pump Station upgrades.  

Frog Level Pump Station Improvement Project
The Frog Level Pump Station Improvements Project was completed in January. The upgrades were designed to increase capacity to support the rapidly expanding residential developments in the area.  

The project included upgrading the pumps, rehabilitating the wet well, constructing a new force main with discharge piping, installing a generator on site, and upgrading all the electrical components. 

Bethel Wastewater System Improvement Project
This summer, improvements to the previously aging Bethel wastewater system are projected to be completed. The Bethel Water and Wastewater Improvement Project has been a years-long initiative of GUC to improve these systems in the northern Pitt County town.  

The first part of the project focused on water upgrades and improvements, which began in early 2023 and were completed by June of 2024. You can read about that project in the September 2023 edition of Spotlight. 

The last leg of the project involves wastewater upgrades. The construction for this portion of the project began in April of 2024. It includes the replacement of both the town’s North and Main Pump Stations.  

Bethel’s Main Pump Station was previously located in a 100-year flood zone, so the replacement will be built outside of the flood plain. It will include around 1,500 feet of new 14-inch force main, which is required for tie-in to the existing force main, and 150 feet of gravity main to tie the existing system to the new pump station. This part of the project also includes more than 50 repairs to gravity mains and manholes throughout the system. 

Clarifier Project 
Our Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) has seen a lot of movement on the project that replaces a failed clarifier by adding two new clarifiers for existing and future capacity needs.  

Clarifiers play an important role in sludge removal before treated wastewater can continue through the treatment process. Sludge settles at the bottom of a clarifier, leaving clear water at the top to move on to the final steps of filtration and disinfection.  

The project began in the spring of 2024 and is seeing significant progress. The two new concrete tanks have been constructed and recently passed a concrete strength test. One tank (Clarifier 6) has also passed a leak test, and Clarifier 7 will be tested in the coming weeks.   

Almost all of the new pipe is in place and passed leak testing. The completed piping has been tied into one aeration basin. In order to connect the piping, the aerations basins must be taken offline, drained, and cleaned one at a time. These basins serve as the treatment step prior to clarifiers and feed the semi-treated wastewater to the clarifiers through underground piping.  

The next big step in this project is the installation of the clarifier mechanisms, which are the parts inside the tanks that do a majority of the work.  

To learn more about the importance of clarifiers in treating wastewater, click here to watch our virtual tour of the WWTP at guc.com (clarifier section is at the 5:35 minute mark).