Rising from the ashes: How Wells sewer plant earned EPA accolades after crippling fire

WELLS, Maine — What a difference a year can make.

In January 2023, the Wells Sanitary District lost power during a significant storm, worked against time to prevent a public health crisis, and suffered a fire that destroyed the electrical room from which its plant operated.

In January 2024, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection nominated the district for the EPA Excellence Award for its restoration of the damages, a feat accomplished in a third of the time and at a third of the cost usually expected for such projects, according to Wells Sanitary District Superintendent Nick Rico.

Earlier this month, Rico led a walk-through at the facility, capping off the project’s final approval.

“Hats off to the insurance company,” Rico said. “They gave us about 90% of the funds to do this.”

The fire occurred in the plant’s electrical room, which now, 14 months later, is fully restored, modernized, and completely brought up to code. The room now boasts a new main breaker, main distribution panel, and automatic transfer switch. Also, the room now has a second door that leads to the outside, bringing the space entirely up to code.

Perfect storm: Power outage at plant leads to fire

The storm occurred on Jan. 23, 2023, dumping a strong mix of rain and snow on the region and knocking out power for as many as 24,000 Central Maine Power customers in York County, according to the district’s project summary. The district’s plant on Eldridge Road was among the thousands.

The outage happened that morning at 10 a.m. In a scramble to keep the water treatment facility operating, the district had all 10 pump stations running on generators within four hours. The district’s on-call operator stayed overnight at the plant to keep an eye on things.

But the next day proved even worse as the roof above the plant’s generator caught fire in the afternoon, causing everyone in the building to evacuate.

Local firefighters rushed to the scene and put out the fire in minutes. However, the damage was unavoidable. Water fell through the burnt roof and short-circuited the 43-year-old generator and all the electrical equipment in the room below. Without that generator and electricity, the treatment plant completely shut down.

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The Wells Sanitary District spent the next eight hours working to restore the plant to “normal” operations by midnight. The district put those quotation marks around the word “normal” in its summary because a lot of work needed to be done in the year ahead to restore the electrical room.

“My crew stepped that up and thought quickly,” Rico said.

To restore operations, the district stayed in touch with CMP and the Fire Department; shut down two of its pump stations; and hired two local companies to transport wastewater to the sewer plant in Ogunquit. They borrowed portable standby generators from the Ogunquit Sewer District and the Kennebunk-Kennebunkport-Wells Water District; and called in contractors to address electrical needs, patch up the roof, and clean up the damaged room.

Rico praised Phil Pickering, the superintendent of the treatment plant in Ogunquit, for loaning Wells a generator, allowing wastewater to be brought to Ogunquit, and staying on the scene to help.

“He is one of the heroes of this saga,” Rico said.

According to Rico, these steps were taken to avert a public health crisis, which would have occurred if raw sewage had been discharged directly into the nearby river.

“By the next morning, we were sending a pristine effluent to the ocean,” Rico said.

Wells completes yearlong mission to repair sewer plant

Those were the short-term steps. The long-term ones would take the next 13 months and would cost nearly $1.2 million, according to Rico. As Rico said, the district’s insurance company covered most of the cost.

A new main breaker and distribution panel were installed in the spring of 2023. In May, contractors installed and equipped a new generator pad, this time outside the facility. In June, a new generator was rigged into the concrete pad. By August, it was operating.

The new roof, complete with metal decking and foam insulation, was also completed in August.

More work took place throughout 2023, including creating a design plan for the whole project, fire-proofing the ceiling of the electrical room, and repainting.

According to Rico, the project hit one snag. Due to supply-chain issues, the district received its new automatic transfer switch in December, rather than August, delaying the completion of the project by four months.Even with that delay, though, the district was able to complete its project earlier and at a lesser cost than is usually anticipated in such situations, according to Rico.

The district was able to “work quickly and save money because of true community collaboration and by leveraging long-term Maine relationships,” Rico said.

“Wells Sewer District acted as a general contractor for the project,” he said. “There simply wasn’t enough time to run the restoration project through the standardized RFP process.”

On March 6, engineers had that walk-through and finalized their punch list for the project.

Rico, who has led the plant as superintendent for more than eight years, has battled the elements at the site before. He once encountered flooding there, for example. When it came to battling flames, however, Jan. 24, 2023, was another story.

“This fire was the first,” he said. “And I hope it’s the only one.”

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This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Wells sewer plant rises from the ashes after fire and $1.17M repair