May 25, 2006

In the pipeline
Fred McNeill on Manchester’s sewers

Fred McNeill is the new Chief Sanitary Engineer for the City of Manchester in the Environmental Protection Division of the Department of Public Works. He’s been on the job for a couple of months and already has survived the major challenge of a 100-year flood. Although he’s new to the position, he’s not new to the area. McNeill grew up in Bedford and Londonderry and graduated from Pinkerton Academy. He landed in the Peace Corps, discovered an interest in environmental engineering and returned to earn a B.S. degree in civil engineering from Northeastern University and an MBA from the University of Southern New Hampshire. Fred then worked for 10 years for an engineering consulting firm in Egypt, Jordan and the former Soviet republics. The firm opened an office in Manchester in 1998 and McNeill came home. He had always wanted to work in the public sector, so he applied and was hired for his present position after 20 years in the private sector.

Since you grew up in the area and now you’ve come back, you’re familiar with the challenges and changes since the Clean Water Act in 1972?
Intimately familiar. I can remember fishing in the Merrimack when I was a kid. You’d catch the biggest bass you’d ever seen but they had orange eyes and you couldn’t eat them. That was before this facility (Manchester’s Wastewater Treatment Plant on the Merrimack River at Winston Street) was even built. I’ve seen great strides in the Merrimack, and that’s very fulfilling, especially north of the Amoskeag Falls. That’s a full recreational area now.

Any examples of surprises that have come up on the job?
I have an excellent example. When I came in I found that we spent $1.8 million dollars a year on electricity. We’re the largest electrical user in the city. We need that because we’re not like a manufacturing facility that’s producing widgets. When you produce a commodity like that, it’s maybe one shift a day or two shifts and maybe weekends. They can shut down a process if it becomes too expensive. We don’t have that luxury. We operate 24/7/365. We have a tremendous amount of equipment: 100 pumps and 400 horsepower blowers. So we’re a huge energy user. I was aware of that but not to the tune of $1.8 million. So PSNH is giving us a free energy audit to identify ways to save some of that money. We hope to see approximately 20 percent in savings, that’s about $350,000. We hope to see that in the near future.

What about the latest weather event, anything creating a major problem?
Firstly, the crews here really stepped it up. They all came in when we called. I had a crew work 18 hours straight and then turned around and went out on another call even though they had just showered and were ready to go home. And there was a 72-inch water pipe on Porter Street that failed creating a 15-foot deep sink hole. We’ll fix that. Other than that, there were some pump station problems, keeping up with the flow. But nothing major there or in the plant. As far as the plant goes, it’s very easy for us to biologically treat this because it’s 90 percent rain water. It’s not like it’s all sewage. Hydraulically, we’re limited. We took in 60 million gallons per day when our normal flow is nearly 15 gallons per day. But because of the hydraulic limitations, that’s when those CSOs [combined sewer overflows] activate and flow goes into the river. So there were several CSO events in the city. But they were 90 percent rain water and the dilution level of the Merrimack when it’s roaring that big is so huge that it’s really no health risk whatsoever.

People might think when they look at all the water flowing like it was, a lot more water, was it like flushing the radiator in your car’s cooling system, was it good for the treatment plant?
Unfortunately, no, there was a lot of debris and trash that came into the plant that we’re still dealing with. All the sand — we call it grit, sand and stones — that comes into the plant makes it very difficult for our process. What happens — because everything gets pumped around the plant — the sand wears down all of our pumps. And so that’s our big problem: mechanical wear due to all the sand in the water.

So the velocity of the water flow into the plant created that problem?
Yes. We need slow velocities to drop that sand out, but when we’re pushing 60 million gallons in, it just doesn’t have time drop out. So, aside from the plant, for the river, was it cleansing? Yes, but it’s a destructive cleansing. When the river recedes, all the debris that was caught up in the river flow will remain on the banks. It’s a messy situation.

The plant stood the test?
Yes. It opened in 1975 as a state-of-the-art plant, and it’s held up amazingly well over the years. I’m new here, and it might sound corny, but I’m proud to be captain of this ship, I really am. It’s a great facility. The city has made the investments over the years and will continue to make the investments because they recognize the importance of protecting the environment. And cleaning up the Merrimack is a vital link in the overall revitalization of Manchester. It really is, because you’ve got the River Walk, Fisher Cat Stadium, and the mills are busier now than they were in their heyday. It all centers around the river.
— Joe Cox

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