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Waste water treatment expansion nearing completion

After years of planning, West Liberty’s waste water treatment facility expansion is almost complete. As of this week, the facility is about 75 percent complete, with the majority of the work left to finish is electrical work

The facilities were expanded in 1999 but it quickly became clear that expansion wouldn’t be enough. Due to West Liberty’s growth and changes in regulations, more storage was needed for solids.

“Every time it rains, it messes up our peak flow,” said Dave Clark of CH2M Hill OMI, the facility manager. “We needed to expand to be able to handle the heavy rain events and have larger solids capacity. We had a lot of excursions during rain events. That sends up a red flag at the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). We wanted to be in compliance.”

Clark explained that there were usually no problems with overflow unless there was a lot of rain. Even so, talk of expanding again began in 2002. Plans were finalized and bids went out for the new expansion in 2005. After the bids came in at 50 percent higher than the engineer’s estimate, the bids were thrown out and the West Liberty City Council began looking at ways to cut costs. HR Green developed the original plans and Veenstra & Kimm were able to look at what the city could do without to cut the costs.

The second bids went out in fall of 2008 and, though the bids came in a little higher than expected, the council agreed to get the project moving. Construction began on the $2.2 million project in December of 2008.

Clark said the project is currently ahead of schedule. Windler Engineering out of Amana is working on the project which included the addition of a 850,000-gallon storm water retention basin and a 500,000-gallon sludge storage tank. Lack of storage in those areas were the two biggest weaknesses in the facility, Clark explained. In addition to the extra storage, new electronic equipment will also be installed to replace the older sensors, controls and other electronic equipment. The facility will be almost tripling its pumping capacity by adding new pumping stations to bring it to a 9,000 gallon per minute capacity.

“Normal flow during the day is about 2.2 million gallons per day. Our flow meter right now only goes to 5 million gallons. We’ve exceeded that many times and there was absolutely nothing we could do,” he explained. “The new tank will store the water until the rain event is done. For most cases, this should solve our overflow and bypass issues.”

The expansion is being paid for solely by rate increases. The sewer and water rates were raised last July to $4.05 and again in June of this year to $4.10 per 1,000 gallons for residents within West Liberty city limits and those outside city limits went to $4.63 and $5.03 per 1,000 gallons.

As City Manager Chris Ward explained at the time of the rate increase, the expansion and improvements to the waste water treatment facility were being mandated by the Department of Natural Resources and the EPA but was not being funded by them. Ward said then that after completing two rate studies, it became apparent to him and the West Liberty City Council that rates would have to be raised for residents inside and outside the West Liberty city limits to be fair to all users.

“After discussing it with council, we decided to raise the sewer rates rather than property taxes,” he said. He added, “It’s growth. Growth is good.”

The Army Corp of Engineers has been regularly inspecting the expansions progress to make sure there are no delays and the project is moving along according to EPA expectations. The deadline for the project’s completion is Oct. 8. The DNR expects the project to be up and fully operating by November.

“We’re already using the sludge tank. It was completed the middle of July and we started filling it a week later because we needed the room,” Clark explained. “We replaced one screw pump and refurbished another. They were 33-years old. The average lifespan for one of those is 20 years. We also replaced a lot of piping.”

Clark said the last step of the project will be to add a diesel generator. The generator will guarantee that if the city’s power goes down, the facility will continue to work. The generator is slated to be installed in September.

Despite the expansion, Clark said this will not completely stop the basement flooding that has occurred in the past. Clark explained some areas of town need new, wider pipes and other improvements which would help reduce the flooding.

“This will help some but I’m not sure how much,” he said.

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