History

Frank Tyre

superintendent, Ocean City sewage disposal plant · active 1937–

The first superintendent of Ocean City's sewage disposal plant, appointed by the Mayor and Council when the works were formally handed over in May 1937. The council had been told by its own engineers on 31 March 1937 'of the necessity of having a man to care for the plant', and had decided a fortnight later that it did not need the erecting engineer to stay on and give instruction. Tyre is the man who then ran a mechanical plant — electric machinery, gasoline stand-by units, under-water sewage grinders said to be the first in Maryland — discharging into the Ocean City inlet.

In the record (1)

  1. 1937 · 1937-04-15

    Ocean City's sewage plant went into operation in April 1937 with the first under-water sewage grinders in Maryland, and put the town's effluent into its own inlet

    'Operation of the new PWA sewerage system and treatment plant at Ocean City will begin this week,' the consulting engineer Clark Gardner told the Messenger on 15 April 1937. The description is the fullest the campaign has of what was actually built. 'The intercepting sewer, constructed along Philadelphia avenue, consists of 7,750 lineal feet of cast iron pipe, varying in diameter from 12 to 20 ins., laid below mean high water of the Sinepuxent Bay.' The treatment plant stood 'on St. Louis Avenue between North First and North Second Sts.' and was 'capable of handling a maximum of 3,000,000 gallons of sewage a day.' 'Among the outstanding devices employed in the new plant are the units for grinding the raw sewage under water. After grinding the sewage is chlorinated in wet wells, and is discharged through a force main to the inlet. The under-water grinding devices, Gardner said, are the first to be used in Maryland.' The engineering problems he named were 'the extreme variation in sewage flow because of the large differential in summer and winter population, and ... the water pressure at the outlet, 16 feet below the level of the bay.' The works were 'formally turned over to the Mayor and Council on Tuesday of this week', the Messenger reported on 20 May, and 'Mr. Frank Tyre has been appointed Plant Superintendent by the Mayor and Council.' The council's own Resolutions of Acceptance followed on 30 April for the sewers and 8 June for the plant.

    The inlet the 1933 hurricane opened had been the fishing fleet's harbour mouth for four years. From April 1937 it was also the town's outfall.

    Ocean City Inlet & JettyFederal Emergency Administration of Public WorksM. J. McDermottA. Stanley Mundy & Co., Inc.Clark GardnerW. Thomas Elliott

    Source · checked 2026-08-11