Our Projects and People

Service Area: Environmental
Photo: Wetland Master Plan
Location: Provincetown, Massachusetts

Project Description: As part of a regulatory approval for their new wastewater treatment plant, the Town of Provincetown, Massachusetts was required to study the potential impacts of stormwater discharge on wetlands within the Town. They were also required to prepare a long-term plan for wetlands management within the Town boundaries. Using grant money, the Town retained Stearns & Wheler to perform a preliminary study and wetlands master plan.

Service Area: Environmental
Photo: Weed Beach Park
Location: Town of Darien, Connecticut

Project Description: Weed Beach is an extraordinarily valuable asset to the Town of Darien. Located along the Connecticut shoreline of Long Island Sound, this park offers both active and passive recreational activities. The Town of Darien Parks & Recreation Commission retained Stearns & Wheler to prepare a Master Plan for Weed Beach Park. For the upgrade and expansion of an existing, heavily used, 22± acre park facility that contains a public beach, light craft launch area, picnic area, tennis courts, paddle tennis courts, children play area, a number of building 250± parking spaces, and undeveloped woods.

Service Area: Energy Services
Photo: Energy and Process Evaluation
Location: City of North Tonawanda

Project Description: Stearns & Wheler performed an energy evaluation, through NYSERDA, to identify, evaluate and recommend energy savings through process wastewater, heating and ventilation modifications. By implementing the recommended energy-saving alternatives, a total annual energy cost savings of almost $185,000 was achieved.

Service Area: Infrastructure
Photo: Biogas Generator
Location: Town of Fairfield, CT Water Pollution Control Facility

Project Description: One large pump plus the two smaller pumps, have the capacity to pump the plant’s peak design flow of 28 mgd against a 100-year high tide (hurricane or similar storm event).

Service Area: Industrial
Photo: Weis Markets, Food Processing Plant
Location: Sunbury, Pennsylvania

Project Description: Stearns & Wheler designed two facilities; one for a milk and ice cream processing facility and one meat packing facility, for a client. Each facility included a 15,000 gallon flow and concentration equalization tank; oil and grease removal by dissolved air floatation; polymer conditioning; various submersible pumping systems for influent, equalization, and effluent wastewater flows; and underground sludge storage and sludge pumping to track loading for disposal.

Service Area: Infrastructure
Photo: Aerial Route 3 Corridor Sewer System
Location: Fort Drum, NY

Project Description: Ultimately, the Route 3 Corridor Sewer projects will provide sanitary sewer service to five communities including the Towns of Champion, LeRay, Pamelia, Rutland, and the Village of Black River. This project is unique with the five local communities working together to eliminate the last remaining concentration of point source pollution generated along the Black River. Upon completion, the overall project will include nearly 24 miles of gravity sewers, 9 miles of force main, and 22 aboveground, self-priming pumping stations ranging in size from 50 gpm to 750 gpm. The total estimated project cost is $29 million.

Service Area: IMS
Photo: Cityscape City of Charlotte
Location: City of Charlotte, North Carolina

Project Description: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utility Asset Management Needs Assessment, provided recommendations to optimize the Utilities asset management approach. Utility implemented an Enterprise Asset Management software solution.

Service Area: IMS
Photo: Data Gathering
Location: Buffalo Sewer Authority, Buffalo, New York

Project Description: Stearns & Wheler implemented a phased approach to maximizing BSA’s investment in CMMS and their assets.

Service Area: Solid Waste
Photo: Aerial Broome County Landfill Expansion
Location: Broome County

Project Description: Broome County selected Stearns & Wheler to permit a 100-acre conceptual design for an expansion north of their existing facility. After permit approval, Stearns & Wheler designed and provided construction oversight for the initial 12 acres comprising Cell 1 of the expansion.

Service Area: Solid Waste
Photo: Bioreactor Delaware County Composting Site
Location: Delaware County, NY

Project Description: As part of Delaware County’s Integrated Solid Waste Management Planning efforts, the Department of Public Works began evaluating options for municipal solid waste composting as a way to achieve rather aggressive recycling goals.

Stearns & Wheler was selected and successfully permitted the first MSW Composting (48 m) Facility in New York State that utilizes the aerobic, rotating drum technology.¬¬ The facility accepts waste municipal solid waste, biosolids and liquid.

Service Area: Solid Waste
Photo: Delaware County Composting Site
Location: Delaware County, NY

Project Description: The Delaware County Department of Public Works completed an Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan for Delaware County, New York. The goal of the solid waste management strategy was to significantly increase recycling and beneficial reuse strategies.

Through Stearns & Wheler’s construction company, S&W Services, Inc., a joint venture partnership was developed with Conporec, Inc. of Quebec, Canada to design and build a municipal solid waste and biosolids co-composting facility for 35,000 tons/year of MSW and 65,000 tons/year of biosolids.

Stearns and Wheler developed a Turnkey Agreement with 1-Year Operations Supervision.

Service Area: Solid Waste
Photo: NDWRF Aeration Blowers
Location: City of Durham, North Carolina

Project Description: Environmental Resources Department
Stearns & Wheler was retained by the City of Durham to evaluate short-term payback options to utilize the excess methane gas produced by the anaerobic digestion process at the North Durham Water Reclamation Facility (NDWRF) and from the closed landfill adjacent to the plant site. An equally important benefit is the City’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent over a period of 20 years. Methane gas utilization options evaluated included on-site, as well as sale to local industries. The City was interested in generating a revenue stream to finance equipment upgrades at the water reclamation facility, while reducing greenhouse gases.

The equipment would provide flexibility as to the equipment served, could reduce operating costs, and could reduce the peak demand power component of the monthly electrical service charge. Conventional dual fuel reciprocating engine units were evaluated, as were gas micro-turbines.

Service Area: Water
Photo: Water System Design and Modeling
Location: Queens Anne’s County, Maryland

Project Description:
Queen Anne’s County, a municipality situated along the Chesapeake Bay on the eastern shore of Maryland, is currently experiencing modest development along its western shoreline. Presently served by a fragmented water distribution system consisting of seven separate distribution service areas, the County sought options allowing the connection of the separate distribution systems and analysis of the various groundwater treatment plants (11 in total) it currently operates. Many of the plants must treat water with high levels of iron, a characteristic of the deep aquifer from which several of the County’s wells draw.

Using Water GEMS, Stearns & Wheler developed a hydraulic model to evaluate supply; quality; and fire flow and emergency demands. The model is being used to design and implement an ideal distribution system to serve the County’s needs.

Service Area: Water
Photo: Skaneateles Lake, NY
Location: City of Syracuse, NY

Project Description: The City of Syracuse owns and operates a drinking water supply using Skaneateles Lake as their source. The water quality of Skaneateles Lake is excellent, exhibiting low turbidity, color, and algal content. Because of its excellent quality and protected watershed, the City has received conditional filtration avoidance under the Surface Water Treatment Rule, and practices chlorination and fluoridation.

Through fluoride tracer studies, enhanced controls and a hydrodynamic turbidity model of the lake, the city has successfully maintained turbidity within acceptable avoidance conditions, and has avoided the cost of a $50± million filtration plant.

Service Area: Water
Photo: Water Reclamation Facility Upgrade
Location: Masonville, New York

Project Description: Stearns & Wheler was retained by the Delaware Chenango Madison Otsego Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) to provide engineering services for the rehabilitation of their 10,000-gpd wastewater treatment facility located at their Harrold Campus. The existing facility, constructed in the late 1960s, consists of a 10,000-gallon septic tank followed by two intermittent subsurface sand filters. Effluent from the filters is chlorinated (using sodium hypochlorite) for disinfection and then discharged into a tributary of Trout Creek, which eventually empties into the Cannonsville Reservoir, one of the major reservoirs providing drinking water for New York City.

As a result, Stearns & Wheler has designed a new wastewater treatment facility. This facility consists of sequencing batch reactors (SBRs) for the secondary treatment process to remove CBOD5 and TSS, as well as achieve seasonal nitrification for ammonia removal and biological phosphorus removal, through denitrification, during the warmer months. An alum feed system is also provided to ensure phosphorus levels are reduced to acceptable levels, even during the colder months.

Service Area: Wastewater
Photo: Aerial Cox Creek Reclamation Facility
Location: Anne Arundel County, Maryland

Project Description: Biological Nutrient Removal (BNR) Upgrade at the 15 mgd Cox Creek Water Reclamation Facility, including seven tank reconfiguration into Modified Ludzack Ettinger (MLE) process with step feed capabilities.

Service Area: Wastewater
Photo: Egg-shaped Anaerobic Digester
Location: City of Nashua, New Hampshire

Project Description: The City of Nashua operates a combined 16 mgd secondary wastewater treatment plant. Previously, the City was disposing un-stabilized biosolids into the City landfill. With the construction of new cells at the landfill, the City was prohibited from disposing of un-stabilized biosolids into the new landfill cells. Through workshops with the City and Stearns & Wheler, the most economic solution for the City was to construct an egg-shaped anaerobic digester to stabilize their biosolids.
The City retained Stearns & Wheler to provide design and construction phase engineering for both the anaerobic digester complex and the headworks renovation project.

Service Area: Wastewater
Photo: Cityscape Kingdom of Jordan
Location: Kingdom of Jordan

Project Description: Implementation of a pilot, low technology septage treatment and reuse project for small community projects in Jordan. Provides cost-effective, easy-to-operate systems that meet the community’s treatment needs.

Service Area: Wastewater
Photo: Aerial of Metro WWTP
Location: City of Syracuse, Onondaga County, New York

Project Description: A consent order, issued by the NYSDEC, required Onondaga County to reduce ammonia and phosphorus. The ammonia phosphorus upgrade, including the design and construction of tertiary biological aerated filter (BAF), and reducing ammonia concentrations to less then 2.0 mg/L (during cold weather operations) and phosphorus concentrations to less than 0.12 mg/L.