Gravette could pipe its sewage to Decatur plant for treatment

— City officials in Gravette and Decatur are considering the possibility of piping Gravette’s sewage to Decatur’s new wastewater treatment plant.

Mayor Bill Montgomery presented the idea to Decatur City Council members at Monday’s meeting, asking for approval to continue researching the feasibility of the project.

Planning for the project is in its earliest stages, public works director James Boston said.

“I can’t stress enough the youngness of this idea,” he said.

Processing Gravette’s sewage in Decatur would solve several problems for both cities, according to Montgomery and Boston. With tighter phosphorus controls, Gravette is under order to build a new wastewater treatment plant, Montgomery said.

Decatur’s new wastewater treatment plant, which went online in June, uses bacteria to break down waste, but it faces the unusual problem of not having enough food - in the form of waste - to keep the bacteria happy when Simmons Foodsshuts down its chicken processing plant for the weekend.

Because Gravette has mostly commercial and residential customers and no large industries, it produces about as much wastewater in a week as Decatur produces in one day, Boston said.

One possibility is that Gravette’s waste could be stored during the week, then treated during Decatur’s slow days on Saturday and Sunday.

“The benefit for Decatur would be to have a weekend flow,” Boston said.

Instead of having to build a new wastewater treatment plant, Gravette would be responsible for building a pipeline to Decatur. Gravette’s current wastewater treatment plant is located on the southwest corner of the town. Boston estimated that about five miles of pipeline would have to be built to reach Decatur’s plant. Engineers are already considering several routes, he said.

A 20-year contract between the two cities has been proposed. Decatur’s wastewater plant has plenty of capacity to treat Gravette’s sewage even for that length of time, Boston told the council. Decatur is currently using about 50 percent of the plant’s capacity. Considering Decatur and Gravette’s projected growth, in 20years the plant would still only be operating at 75 percent of its capacity, he said.

“It has the potential to be a winwin situation for Gravette and Decatur,” Boston said.

The next step will be figuring how much Decatur will need to charge Gravette to cover the costs of processing the wastewater, including expenses like sludge hauling, electricity and long-term maintenance.

After Decatur comes up with a price, Gravette officials will have to take it back to the engineers and figure out if it would be more cost effective to build and operate their own wastewater treatment plant or pipe sewage to Decatur.

“Is it going to be cheaper for them to do this or build a new plant? That’s the big issue,” Boston said.

The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and the bonding company Gravette uses to finance the project will have to give final approval to any plans, Boston and Montgomery said.

Council members agreed to move forward with the idea and tally the cost of processing the wastewater.

“I don’t see any reason we wouldn’t want to do it,” alderman Trip Lapham said.

Community, Pages 2 on 01/20/2010