MONTEVIDEO -- City Council members in Montevideo instructed engineers with Short, Elliot and Hendrickson of St. Paul to begin developing plans for an estimated $17,614,000 upgrade to the wastewater treatment plant.
The decision followed a public hearing Monday.
The city's wastewater treatment plant was built in 1961 and upgrades are needed. However, the majority of the work is aimed at meeting stricter regulations for the discharge of phosphorus into the Minnesota River, said City Manager Steve Jones.
The city will be seeking possible state or federal grant funds for the project. Absent any such help, wastewater users in the city could see their monthly rates nearly double in a three-year period.
The average residential user could see its monthly cost of $27 rise to an estimated $34 in 2008, $42 in 2009, and $50 in 2010 based on the current projections by the engineers.
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Jones said city officials are looking at ways to hold those costs down, and are hoping that the actual increase could be kept to a $40 average instead.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is seeking to reduce phosphorus discharges into the Minnesota River by 25 percent by 2010. There are 143 wastewater treatment plants -- both municipal and private industry -- in the basin that are subject to stricter phosphorus reductions.
Jones said the city believes the existing plant can continue to meet discharge limits into 2008, but the standards in 2009 will be too strict for the plant to meet.
The $17.6 million project includes an estimated $13.2 million toward a chemical phosphorus removal system known as reed bed sludge disposal.
Along with the need to reduce phosphorus, the city will be developing the plant with expectations of population growth from 5,474 today to 5,939 in 2030. The city could also handle wastes from the town of Watson with minimal impact, according to the engineers.
The city primarily handles residential wastes but also has a significant industrial discharge from the Jennie-O Turkey Store processing facility. The company provides pretreatment of its wastes.
Tentative plans call for construction of the upgrade in 2009-10.
