Waste Water Treatment Facility

The Council approved a $26.4 Million bond order on Monday night for improvements to our Wastewater Treatment Facility (WWTF). The Daily News story is here and Gillian Swart has posted extensively on her blog here. The comments section in the Daily News article is especially interesting;-).

I used to call it a sewer plant but if you sit through enough presentations and read enough reports eventually WWTF starts to sink in.

This has been an interesting discussion in terms of capabilities, discharge standards, location, new versus proven technologies, and renovation versus a new plant.

A recent presentation by the Sewer Commission to the City Council is here.

There have been basically 4 options for the Sewer Commission, the Council, and ratepayers:

• Option 1: the $26M renovation, no bells, no whistles, does essentially what it's doing now with better odor control (avg annual additional cost to a residential rate payer is $133)
• Option 2: the $40M basic renovation plus additional structural and equipment improvements (avg annual additional cost to a residential rate payer is $202)
• Option 3: the $89M new plant relocated to who-knows-where (avg annual additional cost to a residential rate payer is $452)
• Option 4: the $42M No Action Plan, fingers crossed, pay for components as they breakdown (avg annual additional cost to a residential rate payer is $192)

My comment at the Council meeting about the "rate being reasonable" was a comparison of $133 to $202, $452, and $192. I wasn't comparing $133 to zero.

I'm not happy about a rate increase either but that's the rationale for it.