With a ceremonial flip of the switch last Thursday, the new Hampton Roads Sanitation District transmission force main began pumping sewage from Mathews Court House to HRSD’s York River Treatment Plant. Those present at the event were, from left, Jim Pyne, chief of HRSD’s Small Communities Division; Mathews County Administrator Stephen K. Whiteway; O.J. Cole, chairman of the Mathews County Board of Supervisors, and HRSD Commissioner Mo Lynch of Gloucester Point. Workers resumed tests later that day and found no major problems, so were able to keep the force main in service. The treatment plant on Brickbat Road is now offline, Pyne said, and HRSD is in the process of deactivating it, but dismantling can’t begin until the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality approves the closure plan. If all goes well, Pyne said, that process should be "wrapped up by early fall." Photo by Charlie Koenig.
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