The clean-water
message has reached the South Shore commuter rail line.
At the Chesterton
Stormwater Management Board’s meeting Monday night, MS4 Operator Jennifer
Gadzala reported that the Northwest Indiana Partnership for Clean Water has
placed large public-service posters on South Shore cars with such tag lines
as “Use Water Wisely, It Doesn’t Grow on Trees” (translation: don’t waste
it); “Use Water Where It Lands, Why Let It Run Away?” (use rain barrels);
and “Use the Can, Not the Land, On the Ground, In the Water” (clean up your
dog’s waste).
Those posters will
be displayed on train cars through May.
The Partnership is
comprised of those MS4 communities in the region--including the Town of
Chesterton--which contract with the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning
Commission to provide educational outreach services and materials.
MS4--or Municipal
Separate Stormwater System program--is a federally mandated initiative
administered here by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
That mandate requires the regulation and monitoring of every aspect of
stormwater in a community, from illicit discharges to work site runoff, from
fertilizers to dog waste.
Bond Project Update
In other business,
Town Engineer Mark O’Dell reported that the next two bond projects--funded
by an $880,000 stormwater bond issued late in 2011--are on hold until the
weather breaks.
Ground should break
before the end of the month on a stormwater lift station designed to drain a
flood-prone alley in the area of 11th Street and West Porter Ave. This lift
station will be the sister of an earlier one installed last year, at a cost
of $147,565, in the alley behind Val’s at Broadway and 11th Street.
Like the Val’s lift
station, the one at 11th Street and West Porter Ave. will pump runoff to a
stormwater line on Lincoln Ave.
A second project is
also on hold until spring: a remedy for a long-standing pooling problem in
the 1000 block of Park Ave. There are no ditches in that neighborhood and
folks have been complaining about standing water after rain for years. This
project will be largely done in-house.
O’Dell told the
board that utilities have been located in the work site and the drawings are
being finalized. Work should commence in April.
February in Review
In February the
Stormwater Utility ran a surplus of $25, 411 and in the year-to-date is
running a surplus of $25,211.