Itasca ready to start work on $35 million wastewater treatment plant
To prepare for business and population growth in Itasca, the village is constructing a $35 million wastewater treatment plant.
Itasca officials, employees and U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam met Monday to break ground at the site along Prospect Avenue.
The plant will take about two years to build and will increase wastewater treatment capacity from 2.65 million to 4 million gallons per day.
As part of the project, workers also will demolish the existing treatment plant on Schiller Street that was built in 1925.
"Itasca needed more treatment capacity for the anticipated growth in the community, plus we also looked at ... the most cost-effective approach, and considered factors like noise, odor," said Carl Fischer, wastewater department manager. "At the Schiller Street plant, there were noisy pumps, a noisy watering process, and loud gear drives that affect the surrounding neighborhood."
The plant was designed by Baxter & Woodman, Inc. Consulting Engineers and will be built by Williams Brothers Construction, Inc. Officials said the project will create an additional 1,200 construction jobs.
To fund the project, Itasca is getting $10 million from an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency program, of which it must pay back half. Itasca also will receive $10 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, issued through the Illinois EPA. The village will pay for the additional $15 million through a bond issue.
Fischer said the new plant will feature technologies that exist in only a handful of Illinois municipalities. Some will remove more phosphorus and nitrogen from water that returns to Salt Creek, while others are more energy efficient.
"The water will be cleaner and this plant will have a lower carbon footprint," he said.
More than 10 years in the making, plans for the plant included input from area and state environmental groups such as the Conservation Foundation, Sierra Club and the DuPage River Salt Creek Work Group.
Fischer said the environmental groups can protest new water treatment plants when towns file a permit request and Itasca wanted to cooperate with them in advance.
"It was really a recognition by the village that the environmental advocacy groups were a stakeholder in this," he said.
On Monday, Roskam also praised Itasca's partnerships at the local, state and federal level that helped get the project off the ground.
"(Itasca is) a community that is so forward-thinking, not just for this generation but, actually, for the next," Roskam said. "I think Washington, D.C., could learn a little bit from Itasca."