Elburn OKs sewer plant renovation despite added cost
The Elburn village board agreed Monday to proceed with modernizing the village's sewage treatment plant, at a cost higher than expected and with the hope the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency will lend it more money.
It accepted a bid of $9.6 million from Whitaker Construction and Excavating. That doesn't include a 3 percent contingency allowance and engineers' fees.
"We are just about rebuilding the plant," public works director John Nevenhoven told the board.
About $5 million of the work is related to installing equipment capable of removing phosphorus, per recent federal antipollution regulations. The village will have to meet those standards by mid-2017, according to Nevenhoven.
The village's contract engineering firm, Engineering Enterprises Inc. of Sugar Grove, had estimated in 2013 the construction could cost $6.6 million.
"EEI's guesstimate of costs is at this point in time irrelevant," village President Dave Anderson told the board Monday. "Is it going to cost more? Yes. Can we do this? Yes. Should we do this and how?
" ... It's not a want. It needs to be done as soon as possible," Anderson said.
"It's not like we could have outhouses and wells in our backyards again," Trustee William Grabarek said.
The work, which will begin this fall and could take up to 16 months, will include replacing two clarifying tanks with a new, larger one. There will be new aerobic digesters, automated large-item screening systems, and a new pumping station for the plant, which Nevenhoven said is 40 years old.
The loan will be repaid from user charges. The village board will vote Monday on raising the monthly sewer charge even more than it initially planned to $7.87 per 100 cubic feet of water by May 1, 2017. The current rate is $2.80. Nevenhoven said households average about 800 cubic feet of water per month in Elburn.
The project could cost more if the IEPA doesn't close on the loan by Sept. 30. On Oct. 1, the interest rate on the loan goes up from 1.995 percent to 2.25 percent.
Trustee Jeff Walter said he wants to board to reconsider its practice of raising the sewer user charge and instead raise the monthly base rate. He also asked whether the village could just do the phosphorus-removal part of the plant first and the rest later. Anderson said the project is intertwined with the other improvements.
EEI project manager Stephen T. Dennison said there is no indication that prices will decrease, and village administrator Erin Willrett said it is likely interest rates will increase.
Trustee Ken Anderson noted that while Elburn's plant is designed and permitted to treat more than 1 million gallons a day of sewage, it usually treats almost half. If it weren't categorized as a 1 million-a-day plant, it wouldn't have to meet the phosphorus standards, he said.