Two giant anaerobic digesters shaped like Faberge eggs have for years served as landmarks for commuters traveling on Interstate-695 east of downtown Baltimore. And cranes, recently removed, signaled the location of one of the latest projects in a years-long, $1.6-billion construction program to upgrade the 100-year-old Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant. “You probably won’t see a collection of this many ‘sticks’ anywhere else in the city,” Shane Lippert noted back in October.
Lippert is the project director for the Clark Construction and Ulliman-Schutte joint venture building the $429-million headworks and wet weather flow equalization improvements, which is the largest undertaking by Baltimore’s office of engineering and construction. The 45-acre project’s goal is to eliminate 80% of the city’s current sanitary sewage overflow volume by increasing influent capacity to 600 million gallons per day from 469 mgd. The facility will have the potential to increase future capacity to as high as 752 mgd.