With a public hearing scheduled for Wednesday’s meeting of the Porter Advisory Plan Commission on the primary plat for a 190-home subdivision, Chesterton Utility Service Board Member Scot McCord is wondering whether the Town of Porter has been in contact recently with the Utility on the subject of its authorized reserve capacity at the wastewater treatment plant.

At Monday’s meeting of the Service Board, McCord asked Interim Superintendent Mark O’Dell exactly that question.

O’Dell’s answer: No, the Town of Porter has not been in contact with the Utility on the issue of its reserve capacity.

“At some point they need to talk to the Utility Service Board to make sure they have enough capacity,” Member Jim Raffin said.

Associate Town Attorney Chuck Parkinson noted that, under the Intermunicipal Agreement of 2006, the Town of Porter is entitled to purchase through 2011, on an annual basis and no later than September 1, an additional capacity of 42,000 gallons per day (gpd) for a payment of $197,400.

The Town of Porter bought an initial extra 170,000 gpd in 2006 for $799,000, then two more allotments of 42,000 gpd for $197,400 each in 2007 and 2008. Its current reserve capacity is 767,000 gpd.

In other business, Parkinson told the Service Board that the Town Council has approved on first reading an ordinance authorizing a sewer revenue bond issue of $5.1 million.

That bond issue will finance a list of approximately 30 collections systems projects, with an estimated cost of $4,348,000, and 15 plant projects, with an estimated cost of $760,360, for a total estimated cost of $5,108,960.

The single most expensive project on the list: the long-discussed, long-postponed Downtown sanitary sewer separation and replacement project, with an estimated cost of $672,000.

Another big-ticket item: the replacement of the 16-inch ductile iron force main along Porter Ave. between South Calumet Road and Fifth Street, with an estimated cost of $498,400. For reasons still unknown, that prematurely corroded main failed last summer between Fifth Street and Eighth Street and the portion of it east of Fifth Street was found to be in not much better shape.

“It looks like we’re slowly going to get some things done with this bond issue,” Member Andy Michel said. “We had the rate increase for a reason.”

Late last year the Town Council, on the Service Board’s split recommendation, enacted a rate increase of 14 percent, effective Jan. 1, with the express intention of floating a bond issue on the back of that hike. The average residential customer paying a bimonthly sanitary sewer bill of $66 in 2008 is now paying a bimonthly bill of $77.25.

Meanwhile, O’Dell told the Service Board that he has decided to retain at the site of the Dickinson Road lift station for the foreseeable future the two 21,000-gallon Baker tanks which the Utility has been renting since heavy rains and snow melt this winter. The tanks have been used to provide temporary storage for wastewater when significant infiltration of groundwater and stormwater has threatened to overwhelm the lift station, which pumps to the wastewater treatment plant virtually all wastewater generated east of Ind. 49.

The cost of the tanks is $75 per unit per day, an expense which McCord characterized as “cheap insurance.”

In May Chesterton used 73.41 percent of its 3,794,000 gpd allotment of the wastewater treatment plant; Porter, 65.88 percent of its 767,000 gpd allotment; the Indian Boundary Conservancy District, 84.22 percent of its 81,000 gpd allotment; and the plant as a whole, 72.35 percent of its capacity.

Last month the wastewater treatment plant bypassed 229,500 gallons of sewage into the Little Calumet River during a heavy rain event, in a month with total rainfall of 4.02 inches.

In May the Utility ran a surplus of $193,654 and in the year-to-date is running a deficit of $85,276.

Member Andy Michel took a moment at the end of the meeting to congratulate the Chesterton High School Boys Golf Team for winning its first ever regional title on Friday. The Trojans were scheduled to play today in the IHSAA State Finals at the Legends of Indiana Golf Club in Franklin.

Posted 6/16/2009