City View: Wastewater Master Plan provides impetus for bond issue
The Columbia City Council has called an April 8, 2008, election to ask voters to support $77 million in bonds for the city’s sewer system.
The council’s decision is based on the city’s 2004 Wastewater Master Plan, which evaluated aging infrastructure, plant reliability, regulatory changes and other factors affecting our ability to provide service. With voter approval, the $77 million in bonds will be paid through sewer connection fee increases and annual sewer utility rate increases.
The current $600 connection fee for a new, single-family house is proposed to increase to $700 in FY2009 and to $800 in FY2010. The current average residential monthly sewer charge of $12.25 per month would increase to $20.80 per month over five years. This estimate is based on an average residential water use of 5,200 gallons per month.
Even with these proposed increases, Columbia sewer rates are still very competitive with systems in other communities. In a field of 33 comparable public municipal sewer systems in several states, Columbia’s current residential rates are in the lower third. Within five years, we estimate, our rates will be no more than in the mid-range of that field, even if the rates in those other systems stay constant.
Of the total bond issue, $67 million would be used to update the city’s wastewater treatment facility, including the city’s wetlands in McBaine Bottoms. They will continue to be an integral component in our treatment process.
Work would include:
• $33.1 million to effectively treat current and future flows and comply with state effluent water quality rules, including the ability to remove ammonia. Starting in 2013, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources will require the effluent from the city’s wastewater treatment facility discharged to Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area to meet new, more stringent standards that are beyond the capacity of our current plant;
• $16 million to rehabilitate the existing mechanical plant, originally built in 1983;
• $7.1 million to replace the existing grit handling system. Newer technologies would increase grit-removal efficiency and reduce maintenance costs throughout the treatment facility;
• $6.9 million to construct biosolids dewatering facilities and remove the existing sludgeholding lagoon. This would reduce truck traffic, increase disposal options, reduce on-site odors and reduce associated hauling costs; and
• $3.9 million to add odor control systems that collect and treat smelly air from mechanical treatment facilities. The remaining $10 million would fund these proposed sewer collection system projects:
• $3 million to extend city sewer for future employment centers. A high priority is extending the Hinkson Interceptor to provide adequate capacity in the city’s Route B industrial corridor;
• $4 million in older parts of our community to accelerate elimination of private common collector systems, repair sewer mains and manholes and investigate the sources of inflow and infiltration problems; and
• $3 million to extend outfall, trunk and interceptor sewer lines to the 100-acre point of a drainage basin. Such projects can help eliminate existing and future wastewater discharges to the creeks that flow through Columbia.
For more information about our sewer system, visit www.GoColumbiaMo.com (search: GoSanitarySewer). If you’re short on time, let me share these basic facts.
The current Columbia sewer system includes:
• 620 miles of sewer pipe,
• 24 pump stations,
• 16,500 manholes,
• One mechanical wastewater treatment facility with a treatment capacity of 13 million gallons per day,
• 130 acres of wetlands, built in 1995 and expanded in 2000,
• Total treatment capacity (mechanical and wetlands) of 20.6 million gallons per day, and
• Current average daily flow to the wastewater treatment facility of 16 million gallons per day.