A planned sewage treatment plant near Midway signals more residential growth in the area west of Columbia.

Developments Far West Boone LLC plans to build the plant, which will be one of the largest in the Boone County Regional Sewer District, along with the Midway Crossings neighborhood.

The development will consist of about 300 lots along Rollingwood Boulevard, near Highway 40 and the Interstate 70 interchange.

Plans call for a plant able to handle 150,000 gallons of wastewater per day and to serve Midway Crossings and the nearly 70 homes in the Rollingwood subdivision.

The treatment plant will be located on a one-acre plot just east of the sewage lagoons that now serve the Rollingwood subdivision.

"We’re still in the process of drawing up plans," said Jim Wright, one of four developers behind Midway Crossings. Wright also owns Wright Appraisals in Columbia.

The development group must get approval from the sewer district before it can start construction. Once the plant is built, the sewer district will inspect it before taking over its operation.

The plant will be the second-largest sewage treatment plant in the district, said Tom Ratermann, the district’s general manager.

"It’s one of our bigger projects," he said.

The waste treatment facility that serves the Clearview neighborhood northwest of Columbia is larger. It was expanded in 1998 to handle 228,000 gallons of wastewater per day, Ratermann said.

The new Midway plant will shutter a smaller plant and a sewage lagoon that now serve the two Rollingwood subdivision plats, which are adjacent to where Midway Crossings will go.

Keeping all three in service would be redundant, Ratermann said, and eliminating the lagoon will be better for the environment.

"Generally speaking, a mechanical plant turns out higher quality water than a lagoon," he said.

Typically, developers build sewage treatment plants and then give them to the sewer district to operate and maintain.

But because Developments Far West Boone is paying to build a sewage treatment plant that will serve two other neighborhoods, the district will pay the developers $212,000 for the estimated 30,000 gallons of sewage water per day that will come into the plant from the Rollingwood neighborhood households, Ratermann said.

Ratermann said the sewer district will have room to expand the new Midway plant to a capacity of 600,000 gallons per day if needed.

"It’s always prudent when you build one of these things to make it a little bit bigger" for future development, Ratermann said.