CH2M HILL to provide wastewater services to Berryville, US

Consulting, design, construction and operations service provider CH2M HILL has been awarded a five-year contract to manage the operations and maintenance of the wastewater treatment plant in Berryville, Arkansas.

CH2M HILL assumed management of the plant on 1 September and since then has been training former city staff and implementing a suite of management systems relating to safety, laboratory analysis, process sampling and control, maintenance, and general regulatory compliance.

City officials have negotiated a new sewer-use agreement with representatives from the Tyson chicken processing factory, which produces around 60% of the waste treated by the city. The agreement includes updated criteria for phosphorus, biochemical oxygen demand, total suspended solids and other factors important to the treatment process. Tyson has agreed to pay a surcharge to cover additional treatment costs if it is unable to meet the criteria.

Berryville mayor Tim McKinney said that despite spending over $3m upgrading the plant in the past few years to meet new limits on its discharge permit, at times the city has had problems meeting the limits for phosphorus.

"With CH2M HILL’s expertise, cooperation from Tyson, and Berryville’s commitment to meeting or exceeding what is required of us, we will become a model of how a wastewater plant in a small town with a large user such as Tyson should be operated," McKinney added.

CH2M HILL Operations Management Business Group president Elisa Speranza said: "While it is true that large industrial clients can pose challenges for any wastewater system, particularly in small communities such as Berryville, we are confident those challenges can be met by working together cooperatively."