RIVERBRIDGE VILLAGE - 65 River Road West, Berlin, Massachusetts
Provencher Engineering was contracted by the site’s civil engineer / site designer, Waterman Design Associates, Inc. of Westborough, Massachusetts to coordinate, design, and secure permits for a new public water supply and wastewater treatment and disposal system for a proposed 66,000 gallons per day mixed-use commercial, residential, retail, and senior care planned community. Master planning of four public water supply wells and a wastewater treatment and disposal facility was initially conducted, followed by the permitting of 4 new bedrock public water supply wells, including coordination and direction of the well installations, pump testing, and field monitoring to determine impacts to streams and wetlands from pumping the wells, and to determine environmental impacts to the wells.
We conducted soil evaluations with the DEP, borings and monitoring well installtion with a well driller, and hydraulic conductivity (slug) tests using our transducers and test equipment. We read dozens of monitoring wells for groundwater level, calculated a seasonal high adjustment to the water table using the Frimpter Method, and contoured the seasonal high water table.
Then we created a hydrogeologic model and determined the mounding effects to the water table elevation due to the recharge of the treated effluent, and contoured the proposed mounded groundwater table. We engineered and designed four equal treated effluent recharge leach fields consisting of plastic open-bottom "Infiltrator" chambers, which did not require any stone. The chambers were fed by four distribution boxes which were fed from one primary D-box and force main from the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). The WWTP was designed by Linden Associates subcontracted to us. We successfully secured a Groundwater Discharge Permit (GWDP) by MA DEP for discharge of treated effluent.
The soil absorption systems were constructed in late 2016, with construction oversight provided by us. This includes bottom of excavation inspections to ensure that unsuitable topsoil & subsoils are completely removed, before placement of Title 5 sand fill begins. We also collected and reviewed the results of soil sample grain size distribution curves to confirm the fill meets specifications, and confirmed the placement of fill beneath and between the plastic leaching chambers. The system is complete and ready for activation once the WWTP construction is completed.
