GRAVETTE — A small crowd, about 30 persons, interested in the Gravette wastewater treatment facility project, were present at a public meeting Thursday evening at the Civic Center.

They heard Jim Ulmer, engineer with Mc-Goodwin, Williams and Yates, explain the project. They asked questions and voiced concerns about the costs to Gravette citizens.

Ulmer outlined the state/ federal mandates required to meet new effluent discharge limits, particularly phosphorus and ammonia/nitrates which Gravette’s existing facility, built about 25 years ago, is unable to meet.

What complicates the project, Ulmer stated, is the effluent from Gravette’s system is discharged into Spavinaw Creek, a losing stream which sometimes disappears underground.

The Fayetteville firm has been involved with the project for several years and has provided three possible solutions to the problem. They have been outlined in previous stories in The News Herald. They are expensive.

Briefly, two of the solutions involve utilizing existing sewer lagoons and equipping them with specialized equipment and processes which bring the offending levels of toxins into compliance with EPA levels.

The other option involves basically bypassing the present facility and transporting the effluent to Decatur for treatment. This would involve installation of pipelines along with required pump stations and building a large holding pond near Decatur.

Decatur has offered to accept the Gravette effluent at a cost of $2.15 per thousand gallons. Based on the outflow from the past year the cost would be more than $100,000 annually, Ulmer reported.

Decatur presently is supplementing its own effluent with trucked-in material to allow its systemto function, particularly during weekends when a poultry firm in that town doesn’t operate. Whether Gravette could negotiate a lower cost and/or a long term guaranteed cost is not known.

A hand-out to those present showed the capital cost for the three alternative solutions ranged from an estimated $6,600,000 for the Decatur plan up to $7,800,000 and $8,000,000 for the other alternatives.

Gravette has been issued a warning from the state that compliance with new standards, or a workable solution to that end, must be in progress by October of this year when the city’s present operating permit must be renewed.

If no solution is reached the city could face daily fines for noncompliance. The city also could lose a guaranteed low-interest loan to help finance the project. That 2.5% loan is expected to cover half of the project costs.

The other half will require raising sewer rates for the city’s less than 900 customers, supplemented with proceeds from a 3/4 cent sales tax voters approved last year.

Citizen questions at the meeting mainly centered on what the sewer rate increase would be to meet the cost of the multimillion dollar project.

Dan Yates noted the increases “would hurt the town” and encouraged the Council, “You’ve got to find a cheaper way”, possibly treating the effluent with chemicals, etc. “I encourage you to find an alternative solution.”

Council member Terry King questioned whether discharging effluent more often than the present three or four months of the year could reduce the toxins.

Ulmer noted that plan would reduce phosphorus but not the nitrate/ammonia problem.

In responding to another question, Ulmer also explained his firm investigated shipping theeffluent north into the Elk River drainage basin but that would be “more expensive” than the other three proposals.

Council member Byron Warren said he and others, including Council member Forrest White, along with Junior Hartley, who oversees operation of the Gravette plant, have visited numerous area plants for comparative purposes. Hartley also visited a different type operation in North Carolina with the engineers.

Warren said Gravette’s present facility operates efficiently and that it is a model in comparison with others they visited. Its discharge water is clear and pure except however for the excess phosphorus and ammonia/nitrate which our system does not remove.

Ulmer will provide sewer rates for Arkansas cities for Gravette to see how increases required here would compare with others.

Contacting the state regulatory agencies was also suggested by the engineer for direction in finding answers. He noted that Pea Ridge is also facing a similar problem, which apparently is common for small systems with a limited number of users.

The consensus of the meeting hinged on the cost of the project which, even with a low interest loan and with receipts from the special sales tax, ultimately will require a dramatic increase in customer costs.

The fact the system has so few users and lacks a major user such as Decatur and other towns have, makes the payment of the mandated project extremely difficult over the 20 year payback life of the loan.

Ulmer also noted that there is no guarantee that even more strict standards might be imposed by federal and state authorities which could result in even more costs in the future.

News, Pages 1 on 06/02/2010