Utility’s new plant on line in Jackson

JACKSON — The Jackson Township Municipal Utilities Authority’s new water plant is up and running with state-of-the-art technology, greater efficiency and higher output to serve the utility’s customers.

The plant went on line in June.

“We are calling it the New Manhattan Street Water Plant and it is on London Drive,” said JTMUA Executive Director David Harpell. “It is behind the Holman School and it is replacing the former water plant at 135 Manhattan St.”

Harpell said the old Manhattan Street plant was built in 1978 and used technology called ion-exchange, which is not very efficient anymore. The new plant uses Green Sand Media, which has pressure filters and is a more efficient process.

“What we basically do here, to a large extent, is remove iron from the water,” Harpell said. “Then we chlorinate the water.”

The new water plant is more efficient, better at removing iron from water, and it has a larger capacity than the previous plant, which was stretched to process about 3 million gallons of water per day. The new plant will process 4.32 million gallons of water per day, he explained.

Harpell noted that in addition to being more efficient, the new plant is larger in size. He said the old Manhattan Street facility was at the end of its useful life.

The new structure will use the wells that previously fed the old plant, and so the JTMUA is using the previous resources, an economic savings. In simple terms, the water is being taken from the same place and fed through a more efficient plant for treatment before being supplied to the authority’s customers.

Harpell said the water system is being used for the entire town, except for the Legler system, which services 300 homes in the southwest portion of Jackson, and Six Flags Great Adventure on Route 537.

Right now the Legler section and Great Adventure are still separate systems, he said.

“Great Adventure, essentially at this time, plans to help run the system,” said Harpell. “They are also responsible for capital improvements out there. It’s sort of a quasi-partnership on the water.”

He said the Hurricane Harbor water park at Great Adventure uses a significant amount of water.

The executive director said all together, the JTMUA owns the Legler system and the Great Adventure system, as well as the primary township system that has 11,000 accounts and about 30,000 customers.

Plans for the near future include the interconnection of the water systems to create one unified system. Right now there are three separate systems, he said.

The executive director indicated that improvements to the system last year cost about $11 million.

Looking down the road, Harpell said the thought is to make more interconnections, close some loops, and send another water main up to Metedeconk Lakes to get a better supply up there.

In other JTMUA business, Harpell said the authority also services Jackson’s sewer systems, which are cleaned on a rotating basis.

“There is approximately 120 miles of sewer lines in town,” he said. “So the guys are out there three or four days a week. We don’t have to treat the sewage because it goes directly to the Ocean County Utilities Authority.”

The JTMUA maintains the pump stations, cleans the sewers and ensures there are no odors. If there are odors, the sewers are treated with chemicals to remove the odor or to keep the odors at a minimum.

The JTMUA is overseen by a board of commissioners that includes Chairman William J. Allmann, Vice Chairwoman Vicki Rickabaugh, Carol Blake, Richard Borys and Geneva Clayton. Joyce Cladek and Brian Lundy are alternate board members.