Chesterton residents have until 4:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 5, to comment on the
preliminary engineering plan for the Utility’s long term control plan (LTCP)
for the reduction of sewage bypasses into the Little Calumet River.
In the meantime, only one person attended a public hearing on the plan, at a
special meeting of the Utility Service Board. That person did like what he
saw and said as much.
The LTCP is a mandate of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency—administered by the Indiana Department of Environmental
Management—the whole point of which is to significantly reduce the amount of
sewage which the Utility is forced to release into the Little Cal during
heavy rain events.
Those sewage releases are more technically known as combined sewer overflows
and they’re caused by unseparated sanitary and stormwater systems, or else
by the infiltration of a sanitary system. During very wet weather, the
amount of stormwater which finds its way into the town’s sanitary system can
sometimes threaten to swamp the wastewater treatment plant, forcing
bypasses.
The LTCP is designed to reduce, if not altogether eliminate, the need for
bypasses, with the construction of a 1.2-million gallon storage tank, into
which the plant’s main lift station will pump the stormwater-diluted
wastewater until the plant has had a chance to catch up, then will bleed it
back into the system for full treatment.
The total estimated cost of the project: $14.9 million, for which the
Service Board hopes to obtain a low-interest loan from the State Revolving
Fund. The PER is a perquisite of any such loan, as is a public hearing on
the PER, duly held on Monday.
Folks who may wish to review the PER may find a copy at the town hall.
Comment cards are available. They may be dropped off at or mailed to the
municipal complex at 1490 Broadway, Chesterton, IN 46304, Attention: PER
Comments.
DLZ project engineer Mark Nye opened the public hearing with an overview of
the LTCP, which is divided into four separate components: the construction
of the tank itself and upgrades to the main lift station at the plant (75
percent of the LTCP); improvements to the wastewater treatment plant (18
percent); a few upgrades of six of the town’s lift stations (2 percent); and
a few repairs to the town’s collection system (5 percent), including the
relining of the Eighth Street and 15th Street mains and the relining of five
manholes.
The peak capacity of the plant is 10 million gallons per day. When heavy
rains increase that flow, the plant is forced to bypass. Under the EPA
mandate, the Utility must be capable of handling what is known as a
10-year/one-hour event, or what amounts to just under two inches of rain in
an hour. When all the calculating is said and done, the tank must have a
storage capacity of 1.2 million gallons.
The rest of the scope of the LTCP is to increase the ability of both the
plant and the collection system to handle heavy rain events, Nye said.
A tentative timeline:
•PER submittal, Nov. 22.
•PER approval, January 2013.
•Phase I (plant, collections, and lift station upgrades) approval, February
2013.
•Advertise for Phase I bids, March 2013.
•Phase II (tank and main plant lift station work) approval, July 2013.
•Advertise for Phase II bids, August 2013.
•Contract award, October 2013.
•Construction begins, November 2013.
•Construction completed, July 2015.
•Operation goes on line, September 2015.
If the Utility succeeds in finishing the work by September 2015, Nye noted,
it will have done so fully one year ahead of IDEM’s deadline.
Discussion
One person spoke at the public hearing, Mark Montgomery, a Chesterton
resident and retired chemical engineer. He had two questions: does the PER
accommodate any new commercial customers generated as a result of the Ind.
49 utility corridor project?
Nye said that it does and that the flow to the plant would have to double in
volume before it would affect operations. “Then there’ll have to be a new
plant expansion.”
Montgomery also wanted to know how the Utility will keep the wastewater in
the tank from going septic.
Nye said in response that the wastewater in question is mostly highly
diluted by stormwater but that in any case it will usually be bled back into
the system for treatment “within a day or two.”
Montgomery appeared to like what he heard. “I think it’s a very well thought
out plan,” he said.
The Service Board took no action on Monday but members did have a few
comments.
Member Scot McCord emphasized that the LTCP “is mandated by the state and
federal government,” with sizable monetary penalties and even a prison term
for Superintendent Rob Lovell in the event of non-compliance.
McCord also observed that the Service Board has “exhausted every funding
possibility, grants, federal grants.” But, he said, “there’s nothing out
there.”
“It’s mandated,” McCord concluded. “We’re going to be a year ahead of
schedule. And we’ve exhausted all the funding possibilities.”
“A lot of people don’t understand the long term control plan,” Member John
Schnadenberg said for his part. “In a nutshell, the days of us overflowing
into the creek are over. It’s a well thought out project. And it’s mandated.
And to eliminate overflows, it’s money well spent, in my opinion.”
“The Great Lakes are the largest body of fresh water in the world,”
President Larry Brandt said. “It’s a precious resource. And for years and
years and years, the quality of the water had been degraded by all the
cities overflowing into it.”
The solution in Indiana, Brandt said: “We’re just not going to put sewage
into the lake. And they came up with the 10-year/one-hour standard. And we
have to build a tank. For the historical point of view, it’s an attempt to
preserve a precious natural resource. From a community point of view, it
just doesn’t make sense to put sewage into our drinking water. It just
doesn’t make sense.”
Rate Hike
The Town Council will hold a public hearing at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13, on a
proposed rate hike of just under 6 percent, to pay for the LTCP.
Under the
proposed rate hike, the average residential household using 10,000 gallons
of water per month would see its bimonthly bill rise from $76.80 to $81.26:
a hike of $4.46 per billing statement or $2.23 per month or 5.81 percent.
Â
Posted
10/31/2012