New Castle County outlines $650 million, multidecade plan to add redundancy to Christina River force main; three sewer projects advance

New Castle County sewer managers described a multidecade program to add redundancy to the Christina River force main and pushed three nearer-term projects into permitting and procurement.

Jason Zern, senior manager for sewer and stormwater, told the County Council Public Works Committee that the Christina River force main "is the most critical piece of sewer infrastructure that the county owns." He said the pipe, built in the early 1980s, serves about 300,000 residents and has no full redundancy; flows range up to tens of millions of gallons per day. An emergency repair near the Wilmington Treatment Plant a few years ago cost about $20 million, Zern said, underscoring the system’s vulnerability.

Zern said the county has nearly finished a conceptual plan for a fully redundant system with a current order-of-magnitude estimate of about $650 million and an overall build-out timeline of roughly 20 to 30 years. He described a Phase 1 bypass aligned with an upcoming DelDOT bridge replacement: the county would install a new bypass line prior to DelDOT’s work so DelDOT can replace the bridge while the force main is out of the way. Phase 1 is expected to be a roughly 2,000‑foot bypass and, if easements are secured,…