City manager discusses need for wastewater plant improvements

By Ralph Pokorny

Nevada Daily Mail

"We estimate that each year the renovation of the city's wastewater treatment plant has been delayed has added about $1 million to the total cost of the project," Nevada City Manager Bill McGuire, said.

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources, which regulates wastewater treatment plants and oversees the states revolving loan fund program that the city is planning to use to finance construction, has estimated that it will cost around $15 million to build the new treatment plant, according to McGuire.

"By using the state's revolving loan fund the city will be able to borrow money at 2 percent interest instead of around 5 percent," he said.

Nevada has been on the list of projects approved to receive funding through the states revolving loan fund program since 2003 when voters approved $5.2 million in revenue bonds to finance the renovation of the wastewater treatment plant. Unless the city moves forward with the project this year they will have to reapply with no certainty they will be accepted again.

The original $5.2 million in bonds have never been sold and on Aug. 7 the city is going back to the voters to ask them to approve an additional $9.8 million in bonds to cover the remainder of the $15 million price tag for the plant improvement.

"I hope we'll never have to sell $15 million in bonds, but we can't afford to get into the project and not have enough approved," McGuire said. "I will not ask to fund any bonds that are not absolutely necessary."

Although the additional bonds will nearly triple the city's debt, they will not cost Nevada sewer customers any additional money.

"The increase in sewer rates the city council approved in December 2006 are sufficient to cover the cost of repaying the bonds without any additional increase in rates," McGuire said.

However, that does not mean that the sewer rates will not have to be increased in the future to cover increased operating expenses.

McGuire said that he will recommend that the council look at the sewer rates annually to see if they need to be adjusted so they cover any increases in operating costs.

"Many years there will be no need to increase the rates, however occasionally there will be a need for a 2- to 3-percent increase to keep up with inflation," he said.

The new plant will have double the capacity of the current facility and will be able to handle industrial wastewater. Currently industrial users, like 3M, are required to pre-treat their sewage before it is discharged into the city's sanitary sewer system.

"We want to be able to handle anything within reason we can attract to the community," McGuire said.

Currently the city is in compliance with the states clean water regulations, except when the city receives heavy rains. During those periods water infiltrates the city's sewer mains and causes the volume of sewage to increase dramatically and bypass the treatment plant, dumping untreated sewage into Little Drywood Creek, as well as, causing sewage to gush out of manholes and back-up into basements.

If the city does not correct this problem the DNR can force the city to fix it and can place a moratorium on any new construction until it is corrected.

According to a 2005 report to the city council from Burns & McDonnell, who had the contract to do the engineering for the plant until the city terminated their agreement in December 2006, the average daily flow at the wastewater treatment plant is 1.39 million gallons per day and the peak flow during wet weather is 15 million gallons per day, which is far above the 1.75 million gallon per day design capacity of the current plant.

In addition to increasing the capacity of the treatment plant the city is also continuing to upgrade the sewer mains and manholes to reduce the infiltration of rainwater into the system which is the primary cause of the excess volume.

While the wastewater treatment plant can meet current state regulations for treating wastewater during normal weather, those requirements are expected to change in the future and require a level of treatment the current plant cannot provide.

Carl Brown, a consultant the city hired in 2006 to do a rate study of the city's water and sewer rates, told the city council in October that in the future the city will probably have to disinfect the effluent that comes out of the plant to meet whole body contact requirement. This was one of the concepts that Burns & McDonnell mentioned in their 2005 report.

In February the city hired Allgeier, Martin & Associates to design a new wastewater treatment plant and McGuire said that the city should have their design in a few weeks.

"They had to do the design from the ground up," McGuire said.