The Pontiac City Council has unanimously voted to request independent legal counsel to give the council "guidance and understanding" of a pending contract that will restructure the city’s wastewater treatment facility.

In a deal made with Oakland County, the county will issue $55 million in bonds for the city, and the city’s wastewater treatment plant will become a public corporation. A three-person board, made up of Oakland County Board of Commissioners chairman Michael Gingell; the commission’s finance chair, Thomas Middleton; and water resources commissioner, John McCulloch will oversee the facility.

The public corporation is formally known as the City of Pontiac Wastewater Treatment Facility Drainage District.

The condition of the drying beds at the Castle Towers Wastewater Treatment Plant in northern East Bethel means the city must make about $2,000 of repairs to satisfy the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency until the facility is decommissioned in fall 2013.

According to an April 4 letter from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), East Bethel did not properly maintain the solids drying bed within the existing Castle Towers wastewater treatment system.

Concentrated solids that settle at the bottom of the wastewater treatment tank within an enclosed facility are discharged to the outdoor drying beds. The solids are removed from the drying beds and stored in an outside bunker until they are eventually disposed of offsite. City Administrator Jack Davis said portions of the bed walls and liners need to be replaced or repaired.

The MPCA wrote that the first drying bed "provides a direct route for solids or runoff from rain on the solids to contaminate the groundwater of the state through the break in the drying bed walls."

According to the MPCA, the other drying beds liners conditions are unknown, but the inspection found the beds to be in a state of disrepair. The MPCA letter states that there is a potential in all the drying beds that roots from small trees could damage the liners, which could then impact the groundwater.

On March 21 he council approved the decommissioning of the Castle Towers wastewater treatment plant when presented with projected costs for keeping this facility functioning. City staff estimated that about $1.6 million of repairs would have been needed in 2013, which included $65,000 to reconstruct the drying beds.

Past 2013, City Engineer Craig Jochum estimated about $260,000 of repairs sometime in the next five years and a couple of other projects beyond 2030 that would add another $150,000 to the upkeep bill.

Instead of keeping this 38-year-old plant running, the council chose to close it. The residents in the Castle Towers mobile home park and the Whispering Aspen housing development will instead be serviced by the joint city and Metropolitan Council sewer project. A second forcemain will transport effluent from this area to the new Metropolitan Council wastewater treatment plant facility.

The forcemain project is estimated to cost about $4.2 million and will be first covered by the bond proceeds. The council will further discuss funding options this spring.

The town of Liberty has taken another step forward by awarding a $177,620 contract to HDR Engineering Inc. to build a wastewater treatment plant

The company was also hired last year to conduct a feasibility study as recommended by a citizens’ task force. Utilities Director Charlie Stevens said the new contract with HDR was for engineering and related services for conducting a facility plan and anti-degradation review to determine if the city could get permitted by the Department of Natural Resources, fund, construct and operate and maintain its own treatment plant. The plan could take two to nine months to complete.

Liberty currently pays Kansas City nearly $4 million a year to treat its wastewater. Facing continuing double-digit annual rate increases for the foreseeable future, local officials have been exploring the feasibility of building a wastewater treatment facility at an estimated cost of $60 million to $75 million.

"Kansas City is under a federal mandate to fix the mess they have down there, and they’re passing the costs onto us," said a Councilman. "Our sewer bills could double every five years." The average sewer bill is about $40 a month.

There is a possibility that the city could put a bond issue on the ballot in November for the wastewater plant, but that is not a certainty.

Construction of a new $66 million wastewater treatment plant is likely to begin sometime in August, now that the Cape Girardeau City Council has authorized a $31 million loan from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. The city was also approved this month for a second State Revolving Fund low-interest loan to complete the job for an additional $39 million.

Bid advertisements began May 20 and they will be opened July 3, though the winning bid must come from one of 12 applicants who were prequalified.

City officials described the agreement as the first step of getting the sewer plant built, which would bring the city into compliance with state and federal standards that no longer allow untreated wastewater to be bypassed into the Mississippi River, which happens at the city's existing plant about 30 to 40 times a year.

"It's the first half of the funding that makes the whole thing happen," said Public Works director Tim Gramling. He also said that with a struggling economy, he's hopeful an upside could be that contractors are hungry for such a high-dollar project and the bids may come in under the estimated cost.

A prebid conference for applying contractors will be held in June.

The wastewater treatment plant is the biggest capital improvements project in the city's history. The plant, which will be built at the Public Works Department site will replace the current 52-year-old plant.

City staff and a host of outside engineers recently updated the St. Joseph City Council on the estimated $26 million wastewater plant project.

The project will use ultraviolet light to disinfect St. Joseph’s wastewater as part of an effort to meet requirements from the EPA, designed to keep pollutants out of waterways like the Missouri River.

"As the council knows, we have a variety of environmental issues over the next several decades. But the next several years are especially challenging," Assistant Public Works Director Andy Clements said.

A representative from Black & Veatch explained the steps the firm took to keep costs down on the project. The city originally budgeted $34 million for the job, which Black & Veatch believes can be completed for $26 million.

For example, the disinfection facility will have an original capacity of 54 MGDy, but was engineered with an expansion to 108 MGD in mind; the higher capacity will become a necessity with the addition of a high-volume treatment facility several years in the future.

Although current technology would require six channels lined with ultraviolet lights to treat 108 MGD, Black & Veatch recommended building just three now. Ultraviolet technology likely will improve in the years before the city needs the extra capacity, which could let the city treat the additional sewage with better lights, instead of building three more channels.

The project comes as a response to a mandate from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in June 2009 that the city treat its wastewater before discharging it into the Missouri River.

As a side benefit, the disinfection project could save the city money during floods or whenever the Missouri River flows at high levels. The city currently must rent and buy diesel fuel for temporary pumps to discharge treated wastewater when the river rises above a certain point, as high water renders the gravity-flow system ineffective. The disinfection project will include a new pump station to send wastewater over the protective levee to the river.

The city previously acquired roughly 6½ acres for the expansion. Once a construction date is set, work is expected to last 18 months.

The city of Pleasant Hope is in the bidding stage of a project to construct a disinfection system at the end of the wastewater treatment beds, a project that is estimated to cost about $100,000.

For more information go to:

http://www.cityofpleasanthope.com/water-wastewater.html

On May 7, the Ozark Board of Aldermen awarded a $573,550 contract to Smith and Edwards Construction Inc., for a wastewater treatment facility sludge aeration system improvement project. The bid includes the substantial cost of a SCADA system.

The city of Ozark operates two wastewater treatment facilities. The North 22nd Street facility has a design capacity of 2.1 MGD and the new Elk Valley facility, completed in 2009, is capable of treating 1.0 MGD. Both facilities are extended aeration ditches with biological nutrient removal, tertiary filtration and ultraviolet disinfection.

Seneca County Commissioners have approved two contracts for construction of the Bascom sewer system to allow the contractor to move ahead with the more than $3.5 million project.

The action was necessary to avoid delays in construction of the Hopewell-Loudon school, which will be tied into the new system

Helms and Sons Excavating of Findlay, will do the Bascom project which includes installation of distribution and collection pipes; and construction of the wastewater treatment plant.

Marietta City Council has authorized advertisement for bids on the Glendale Road and Brentwood Street waterline replacement project and approved a multi-million loan application for the wastewater treatment plant.

That project is expected to cost more than $690,000.

In addition, council authorized application for an Ohio EPA loan totaling more than $7.3 million for the second phase of the city's wastewater treatment plant upgrade. Total cost for the upgrade, expected to be completed in 2015, is more than $20 million.

The city of Hudson is exploring the cost of building its own sewer treatment plant because of the rising costs of having the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) treating its wastewater.

Hudson City Council members have asked for a report on the savings and costs of a city-owned treatment plant compared to the city's involvement in the regional sewer district.

The city will explore the potential return on the investment and rates for city customers as the next step, said city engineer Thom Sheridan.

A recent study was driven by the NEORSD increasing rates by 66 percent over a five-year period. Hudson paid approximately $1.8 million for wastewater treatment in 2011 and will pay nearly $3 million in 2017.

During the last three years, Hudson pumped approximately 1.1 MGD of wastewater to NEORSD for treatment.

The city has several other options including staying with the current system, building a new plant at the old plant's location, and discharging into Brandywine Creek, or pay for improvements to another existing plant to handle more sewage.

A new plant in Hudson would costs $38 million, with annual operating costs of $5.3 million.

In order to build a new plant, the next step for the city would be to pay $30,000 for a stream assessment and another $30,000 for stream modeling to determine if Brandywine Creek has the capacity to accept treated water while maintaining quality requirements. But council members were not ready to invest the $60,000.

Council asked Sheridan to provide a report on the potential return on an investment in a sewer treatment plant before the city finishes the budget for 2013.

For more than a decade, Norman city leaders have been debating wastewater treatment plants.

Those treatment plants are essential to treating Norman’s growing wastewater needs. Now, an upcoming city of Norman budget item proposing the expansion and improvement of the south side wastewater treatment plant in 2013 has brought the matter to a head.

The Norman Developers Council wants the north side treatment plant — approved by voters — included in the upcoming FY 2013 budget. To that end, the developers group is asking Norman City Council to move forward in building a north side treatment plant.

Building a north side plant would increase capacity in the north and expand the service area, allowing for properties in that area to be developed, but the city must make improvements at the city’s existing south side plant in order to meet Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality requirements.

The south side plant also will be expanded to increase its capacity. Just under $53 million is included in the FY 2013 city budget for the south side improvements and expansion.

The $53 million price for the south side plant is much lower than the cost of building a new plant on the north side. Those estimates are $85 million. Because of the cost difference and the requirements by DEQ at the south side plant, city staff has proposed moving forward with the south side plant expansion and improvements first, and then doing the north side treatment plant later as the north continues to develop.

"It’s cheaper to do the project than to get fined by DEQ," Utilities Director Ken Komiske said. "They’re going to keep fining you until you do the project."

The north side plant was to be constructed in two phases and add 4.5 MGD of treatment capacity. The existing south side plant currently processes 12 MGD. Capacity there would be increased by 5 MGD for a total treatment capacity of 17 MGD. Eventually, the two plants together would allow for a total capacity of 21.5 MGD.

When the Davis city council opened bids for a new wastewater treatment plant, the reality of costs did not meet expectations.

Bids for the plant were higher than the city had hoped, but the city has been able to reduce the cost. Recently, the council approved a change order for the plant with a deduction of $779,583. The reduction, along with a $500,000 grant from the Department of Environment Quality, will cut project costs below $9 million.

"When the bids came in, we were anticipating them to come in around $8 million or less," City Manager Roger Pulley said.

Walters Morgan Construction was the low bidder. Between the city, Garver Engineering, DEQ and Morgan Construction, deductions were made in the amount of nearly $800,000. Pulley said the city was also able to keep its energy grant from DEQ, which is awarded for adding components within the project which are energy efficient.

During a special meeting recently, the Long Grove city council approved an expenditure of $8,540 to the Department of Environmental Quality to review plans for the proposed wastewater treatment plant. Variances that have been made to the original plan and discussed with DEQ were reviewed during the meeting as well. The city will now wait to see if DEQ accepts the variances before moving forward.

Garver Engineering took the plans to DEQ and there is no timetable about when the city will find out if the permit is approved. Should the city gain approval for the permit, it will then begin meeting with Municipal Finance and the Oklahoma Water Resources Board to secure funding for the project. Costs for the plant are not certain.

Once the bids begin to come in, the city will be able to start determining the cost of the project. It has been forecast to fall between $10 million to $14 million.

After meeting with the finance entities, the city will be able to send out bids. Construction is scheduled to begin Oct. 1 and the city is currently four weeks ahead of schedule.

The Albany sewage treatment plant has an odor control problem.

The odor is the apparent result of continuing problems with a system that is supposed to be handling solids in the process of treating wastewater. The system, known as "Cannibal," is supposed to turn sewage sludge into a product that can be sold for agricultural fertilizer. Because it is not working as intended, the city instead has had to dispose of the sludge at the Coffin Butte landfill in northern Benton County.

In case the problem can’t be fixed, Public Works Director Mark Shepard said, he has budgeted $500,000 for sludge disposal costs next year, but he said it would not have an immediate effect on higher sewer rates.

Shepard said that after the city got two neighborhood complaints about the odor problem, it arranged with Allied Waste to double the pace at which the material is being hauled to the dump.

The problem first came to public attention last August when it showed up in the minutes of meetings by the joint committee overseeing management of the $75 million Albany-Millersburg Water Reclamation Facility, completed in 2009. But Shepard said the system still is not functioning as intended and the cities are in mediation with Siemens, of Waukesha, WI, the manufacturer. A meeting has been scheduled with a mediator in Oakland, CA, for June 13. If engineers can’t make the system work and mediation results in no settlement, Shepard said the cities may sue.

The system was not performing as guaranteed by the supplier, the joint Albany-Millersburg management committee was told last year. Last summer officials discussed the odor problem as well. It was said to be the result of dewatering the sludge in an open pile.

A state-of-the-art technique for treating sludge from Seaside’s sewer treatment plant will not only be cheaper, it will be beneficial, says Public Works Director Neal Wallace. If the city buys a 10-year-old dryer to remove water from the sludge and create fertilizer pellets, annual operating costs would be reduced by about $106,000, Wallace said.

The council unanimously approved the purchase.

The Fenton Fenix Dryer, which would be added to the belt press the city already owns, would produce 200 tons of dried solids a year and would take only 20 large dump trucks to haul it away. The cost is estimated at $77,748 annually. The city currently presses water from the solids, creating 1,250 tons a year and requiring 63 loads to be transported to a landfill in McMinnville at a cost of $183,955.

The new process, which will continue to be regulated by the state Department of Environmental Quality, will not require some of the chemicals – including lime – that are used now to treat the mostly liquid sludge. The dryer will remove 90 percent of the water.

To buy the used dryer, the city would pay $392,000; a new dryer would cost $1.2 million, Wallace said. Shipping and installation costs would bring the total initial price tag to $550,000.

The North Whitehall Township Planning Commission has recommended a conditional use of a wastewater treatment plant to be built to the Board of Supervisors.

Members of the Lehigh County Authority testified about the 200,000 gallon-a-day sewage treatment plant at great length, answering a myriad of questions. The plant is targeted to serve KidsPeace, Lehigh Carbon Community College and a future Walmart.

The Board of Supervisors will hear the recommendation at their next meeting, set for June 4th.

When it rains in Gallitzin, the wastewater treatment plant operator must close valves to divert flow into local streams. Much of that flow is raw sewage, which should be treated at the facility. But excess flow through the plant would wash away microorganisms that break down waste, and restoring the operation often takes weeks, said John Clabaugh, an engineer with Stiffler McGraw of Hollidaysburg.

Federal and state environmental officials have warned the town of Gallitzin that the excess flow from the wastewater treatment plant must stop or huge fines could be imposed for failure to comply.

During heavy rains, inflow and infiltration overwhelms the 400,000-gallon capacity of the plant, which has an 80-year-old clay collection system.

Joel Romagna, also of Stiffler McGraw and engineer for the Gallitzin Sewer and Disposal Authority, told authority members and elected officials from the boroughs of Gallitzin and Tunnelhill and Gallitzin Township that the plant overload is a chronic problem.

Driving the guidelines are efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, starting at local streams.

The only solution is replacing the collection system and private laterals at a cost of nearly $7.5 million and construction of a new treatment plant at a cost of $9.2 million. Total project cost is nearly $17 million.

As Ellsworth Air Force Base celebrates its 70th anniversary, the South Dakota Ellsworth Development Authority is making headway on a major project – a new wastewater treatment plant.

The Legislature established the Ellsworth authority in 2009 under the Governor’s Office of Economic Development to help insure the base never closes because it is the largest employer in the state.

Construction on the $19 million joint wastewater treatment facility is expected to start in the fall. The authority-owned facility will serve Ellsworth and the city of Box Elder, which both need to replace existing systems to come into compliance with new regulations.

Choosing to replace their separate systems with a joint facility saves both the base and the city millions of dollars. It is likely the authority will contract out the daily operations of the plant.

Bids are due June 14, 2012 for expansion of the capacity to 2.1 MGD of the Bridgeland wastewater treatment plant.

For more information go to: http://www.civcastusa.com/projectdetails.aspx?projectid=1918

The San Angelo City Council has chosen a Hickory Aquifer water treatment option that is projected to be more expensive in the long run than another, but which could give the city more flexibility in treatment and keep radioactive waste away from San Angelo's sewers.

The council voted unanimously in a special meeting to go with the ion exchange method to treat Hickory water.

The two major treatment options up for consideration were ion exchange and reverse osmosis. The reverse osmosis method uses pressure and a filter to get 90 percent of the water back, leaving 10 percent of the water in radioactive-concentrated wastewater, which could be diluted and sent to the sewer system and then on to fields for land use. For ion exchange, the resin used to filter the radiation particles is shipped to a facility that can handle the radioactive waste.

The water from Hickory Aquifer has an average of 35 picocuries per liter, and five picocuries per liter is the federal limit. The ion exchange treatment would bring the picocuries on average down to five, although it could reduce them further if the filter is switched out more often, a representative from Carollo Engineering said. The council has selected the firm to be the consulting engineers for the project.

The ion exchange would cost $115.7 million over 30 years, including operations and management costs, and it has the added problem of not having much competition for the kind of filters that can be used. That could mean a higher cost and that the filters might be hard to obtain.

An option of reverse osmosis treatment which also was seriously considered, had a cost of $102 million over 30 years.

The ion exchange method has a lower capital cost at more than $20 million compared with a capital cost for reverse osmosis and ion exchange combination of almost $40 million.

The Hickory Aquifer project is about $20 million under the $120 million budget. That money is required to be spent on the aquifer project, and it could be used for something such as increasing the well field capacity.

Big Spring voters will decide on Saturday, how to pay for improvements to their water and wastewater treatment plants.

This debate started last year after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality gave the city of Big Spring several citations for their water treatment plants. None of these were serious violations but they do need to be fixed.

"We are needing to do some upgrades on the plants, not only to address the violations but also aging infrastructure," Assistant City Manager, Todd Darden, said.

It will cost around $13 million to fix these plants and City Council voted on an option for residents to choose how they will renovate the plants. Voters will decide if they want the projects.

Major construction on a $353 million expansion of Pierce County’s sewage treatment facility will begin late this year.

The Pierce County Council is expected to move forward next month by giving initial approval for the sale of $210 million in bonds for the project. The county plans to finish the work by mid-2016, when the current plant will be at or near capacity.

The Chambers Creek Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant will be expanded to increase capacity and meet anticipated stricter treatment regulations. Capacity at the plant, built in 1984, will increase from 28 MGD to 43 MGD, said Tim Ramsaur, the county’s wastewater utility manager. That’s enough to meet the county’s demands until 2030, he said.

The plant provides sewer service to an estimated 252,000 people in unincorporated Pierce County and in cities served by the county. Besides unincorporated areas, the sewer utility services Lakewood, University Place, DuPont, Milton and Steilacoom, as well as portions of Tacoma, Fife and Edgewood.

The construction schedule includes a pause for what is expected to be the biggest sporting event ever held in Pierce County, the U.S. Open Golf Tournament. Work will shut down for the month of June 2015. The tournament will be held at Chambers Bay which is located next door to the plant

The contractor for the project is Mortenson Construction.

In addition to the expansion, an older part of the plant will be renovated by replacing worn-out pumps, pipes and other equipment. Besides increasing capacity, the expansion will allow the county to meet stricter state regulations that require reduced nitrogen levels in the treated liquid discharge going into Puget Sound. The county is the largest sole-source contributor of nitrogen into the Sound south of the Tacoma Narrows.

A series of bond issues through 2014 is financing the project, so far about $20 million in bonds has been issued.

The city of Clarkston is seeking a construction loan to upgrade its wastewater treatment plant.

The facility renovations will help to clean the water in a more effective and efficient way. Public Works Director Jim Martin said the technological upgrades will be expensive but are long overdue.

The construction loan will be in the amount of approximately $2 million. That is due to a shortfall in the initial budget, which was estimated to be approximately $12 million.

The lowest approved bidder for the renovations offering was $14.5 million.

Bids are due June 27, 2012 for wastewater system improvements.

For more information go to: http://www.h2bid.com/procurement-notice-162513.html