Alli Camp ’14: Recent developments have been made in the ongoing struggle to improve our waste removal system. Currently, two orange and green tanks by the lower school house all the school’s sewage.
“Here’s the really exciting part [about our current sewage system],” commented Head of Upper School, Geoffrey Wagg, “if they don’t empty the tanks in time, we’d have to close school. We could have a poo day.”
Newtown Square does not operate a public sewage system. In fact, most houses in Newtown Square have their own, on-lot septic system.
However, when the school moved to Newtown Square, the administration believed a septic system would be put in place by Newtown Township within five years. Consequently, they made the decision not to build their own septic system, instead opting for a system which Wagg coined “pumping and hauling.”
“This has been a political fight since long before we came out here,” noted Mark Notaro, Director of Facilities and Operations. “There’s been promises about the township installing the sewer mains down 252, then picking up all [the houses on] the roads that lead into it. It just hasn’t happened yet. There hasn’t been an easy political solution for the township. I think we are the closest we’ve ever been now.”
A plan has been proposed with help from the Ashford development, a soon-to-be 400-plus-unit residential development on the former DuPont estate. Notaro explained, “We will pump our waste to [the Ashford] pump station which will be located about a quarter of a mile away on their property and they’re going to pump it down 252 eventually to a manhole which goes into an existing sewer system almost out of the township. They’re very close to getting approval. [The township] won’t grant us approval until they know where we plan to put the sewage.”
Notaro assured, “As soon as they get approval, we can get our approval. The last step is getting approval from the DEP [The Department of Environmental Protection].They plan on trying to start [construction] this calendar year.”
Notaro speculates that the whole cycle from start to finish will take 12-18 months. Trenches will have to be dug across Goshen road and up the side of 252. Notaro asserted, “the annual cost [of the new sewage system] will go down in comparison to the ‘pump and haul’ method, but the initial cost to put the system in is going to be multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Both the White Horse and Echo Valley developments also plan on utilizing our system in the future. Any other developments along the system’s line will be welcome to utilize it as well.
Notaro hopes that this plan will be implemented as quickly as possible. He stated, “there’s going to be a lot of money on the table [and] people aren’t going to be happy if they don’t get a system that’s working.”

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