By JOE MURCHISON
Courtesy of Joe Murchison
On Aug. 29, road cones and portable stop signs were hauled away from Bond Mill Road for the first time in two and a half years. That’s how long a contractor for the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) had been digging up the primary road of the West Laurel neighborhood to install a 48-inch-diameter water pipeline underneath.
But residents’ short daily delays at one-lane bottlenecks were a small sacrifice for a greater good: enabling WSSC to keep up with the water demands of its customer base in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, which is 1.9 million and growing.
The pipeline will increase water supply to WSSC’s Patuxent Water Filtration Plant, at Route 198 and Sweitzer Lane, by almost 50%, allowing the plant to treat 110 million gallons per day. The Patuxent plant supplies water to the northern half of Prince George’s County and to other sections of both Prince George’s and Montgomery counties.
The Potomac Water Filtration Plant, on River Road in Montgomery County, is WSSC’s only other plant. WSSC, which is headquartered on Sweitzer Lane in Laurel, is the eighth-largest water and wastewater utility in the nation.
The new pipeline is 2.5 miles long, starting at a Rocky Gorge Reservoir pumping station, by the Rocky Gorge dam, and then running along Brooklyn Bridge Road, down Bond Mill to Ashland Drive and then across open land underneath power lines to the filtration plant.
WSSC anticipated the work would take two and a half years to complete when it began in February 2021, but encountering solid rock beneath Bond Mill Road between Diploma Way and Orem Drive was one of several obstacles that extended the project by more than a year.
WSSC spokeswoman Lyn Riggins said in an email that the pipeline is scheduled to be tested this fall, once a few last connections are made. If no problems are found, permanent asphalt patches are scheduled to be applied over Bond Mill’s rough, temporary patches in November, she wrote.
Riggins also said that the entire length of Bond Mill Road will be resurfaced next spring to complete the project. That will mean another round of delays for West Laurel residents, but they definitely will be looking forward to the result.
