One Uniontown lagoon now drained for repair

The repair of Uniontown’s three lagoons is now well under way. Construction crews have now drained one of the main lagoons and will in the next few weeks drain the second lagoon.

Goal of the project is to replace clay lining of the lagoons with impermeable rubber lining. The lagoons were leaking at an accelerated rate, according to state Department of Ecology.

Once the lagoons are drained, crews will scrape out the dried layer of bio-solids and pile it downhill of the lagoons to dry for a year, said Uniontown public works director Brandon Schell.

The project has been in the works for years, after the state Department of Ecology conducted studies showing the lagoons were seeping most of Uniontown’s wastewater directly into the ground.

The lagoons were lined with a soft clay when they were originally constructed. The first two of the three current city lagoons process an average of 24,000 gallons of wastewater per day, and between 17,000 to 22,000 gallons of that water was found to be leaking back into the ground in a 1998 study.