By KEVIN NEVERS

The price tag for a list of projects and purchases contemplated by the Chesterton Utility in 2008 totals $3.645 million.

Which is why, at its meeting Monday night, the Utility Service Board instructed Superintendent Steve Yagelski and staff to make that list a little more palatable and digestible, by giving each item a high, medium, or low priority.

The list is divided into six categories: sanitary sewer replacements of new construction; interceptor projects; infiltration and inflow correction; lift station maintenance; manholes improvements; and equipment purchases.

•Sewer replacements or new construction, at a total estimated cost of $1.2 million. The big budget items on this list: the Downtown replacement project ($300,000); the North Calumet project ($200,000); the Porter Ave. project ($150,000); and the Morningside project ($100,000).

•Interceptor projects, at a total estimated cost of $1.45 million, with future new interceptors expected to cost fully $1 million.

•Infiltration and inflow correction, at a total estimated cost of $380,000, with the relining of select sanitary sewers expected to cost $300,000.

•Lift station maintenance, at a total estimated cost of $355,000.

•Manhole repairs and replacements, at a total estimated cost of $160,000.

•And two major equipment purchases, a portable generator estimated to cost $50,000 and a new camera system estimated to cost the same.

Town Engineer Mark O’Dell indicated that a fair number of the listed projects will be pursued as part of the long-term plan required by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to control and eliminate combined sewer overflows into the Little Calumet River.

For his part President Larry Brandt noted that none of the listed projects comes as a surprise. It’s only when you list all of them on paper and ball-park their cost that you start feeling a bit intimidated, he said.

Some Expenditures

In other business, and by 5-0 votes the Service Board approved a number of expenditures: $1,610 on an all-weather precipitation gauge; $850 for an air compressor; $1,740 on a deionized water system, expected to save a total of $2,580 annually; and $95,000 on a boiler and heat exchange apparatus.

The Service Board also voted 5-0 to authorize Yagelski, Town Engineer Mark O’Dell and Street Commissioner and Member John Schnadenberg to travel to an equipment conference later this winter in Louisville, Ky., with an eye to acquiring a multi-purpose vehicle or device for pulling pumps from lift stations.

Write-Offs

By 5-0 votes the Service Board agreed as well to write off a total of $30.68 in uncollectable sewer accounts; to transfer to an operating or other appropriate account a total of $1,662 in unclaimed customer guarantee deposits going back as far as 1998; and to recommend to the Town Council to write off a total of $65.65 in uncollectable refuse accounts.

November in Review

In November Chesterton used 43.1 percent of its 3,794,000 million gallon per day (gpd) allotment of the wastewater treatment plant; Porter, 63.48 percent of its 725,000 gpd allotment; the Indian Boundary Conservancy District, 68.64 percent of its 81,000 gpd allotment; and the plant as a whole, 46.39 percent of its capacity. No bypasses were recorded last month. In May the Utility ran a surplus of $179,959 and in the year-to-date is running a deficit of $54,552.

Posted 12/18/2007