In the News

The Springfield Water and Sewer Commission’s 250,000 customers across the lower Pioneer Valley might take the water in their tap for granted.

“It’s amazing,” said U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield, Friday on a tour of the Springfield Water and Sewer Commission West Parish Filters Water Treatment Plant in Westfield.

He stopped off as workers craned scaffolding into place for the $25 million new clearwell and backwash pump station project, the first phase of a new West Parish Filters Water Treatment Plant. Work on the clearwell and backwash pump station began in December 2021, according to the commission.

These upgrades are part of the commission’s $550 million Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Renewal Program, a set of 20 projects that includes the clearwell and backwash pump station here in the Berkshire foothills just west of Westfield.

Work is accelerated because the commission received a $250 million competitive low-interest loan from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act or WIFIA program as well as through financing from the Massachusetts Clean Water Trust State Revolving Fund.

The program saved rate payers more than $80 million in borrowing costs, said commission chairwoman Vanessa Otero.

Neal, a former Springfield city councilor and mayor, asked if workers still shoveled sand.

The next step on the tour was the underground slow sand filters where workers, by hand, scrape off the top layers of sand to remove accumulated biological material from the top layer.

Link to article HERE. 

Springfield Water and Sewer Commission executive Director Josh Schimmel said it’s all technology from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and its all gravity fed with water flowing from the Cobble Mountain Reservoir through the West Parish plant and on to storage and treatment on Provin Mountain in Agawam and then to customers in towns and cities including Springfield.