GRAVETTE — Gravette City Council members, at a special meeting held last week, were told that redesigning the city’s waste-water treatment system to transport effluent to Decatur is not a feasible money-saving solution and in fact could result in long-term environmental hazards.
Jim Ulmer, engineer with McGoodwin, Williams and Yates (McGWY), the city’s consultants, said redesigning the Decatur plan by eliminating two lift stations in favor of one high-pressure system in Gravette would save very little money.
The Decatur plan had been rejected by the council in favor of a plan to utilize Gravette’s present system through upgrading. However, state regulators suggested the above design change in the Decatur plan should be researched before they would approve a plan for the city.
Ulmer said research revealed the potential environmental problems, restrictions and complications, particularly since the pipeline would require crossing Spavinaw Creek twice, could cause many problems in the future. Ulmer said such a line “could be six miles of trouble.” He recommended the city stick with its original choice
The city faces a requirement to reduce the phosphorus and nitrate discharges to 1 part per million. The present sewer plant is not designed to meet these state requirements without major modification.
Ulmer provided the council with a new possible rate table which compares utilizing 80 percent of a bill for debt service compared with using 50 percent of the debt service revenue for payment of the bonded indebtedness.
These amounts vary sharply if voters would approve an additional sales tax to help pay for the $6 million project and would depend upon the sales tax rate. The amounts range from minimum bills of $35.29 plus an additional $9.91 per thousand gallons, or $64.10 for 4,000 gallons without a tax increase, to a minimum bill of $35.22 for a 4,000 gallon use with a 1 1/4 cent new sales tax. Voters earlier approved a 3/4cent tax to pay for the project.
The council is faced with making a decision on a financing package and entering into further contracts with McGWY by Nov. 4, which Ulmer said is necessary to meet a proposed project performance plan, which includes the final plant design, construction specifications, final environmental studies and advertising for bids.
What complicates the financial problem for Gravette is the plant serves less than 900 users. None of these is a large user such as the poultry plant at Decatur, and the city does not have the large numbers of users other cities have. Hence, the financial burden of a potential $6 million dollar loan for such a small number of households is a prohibitive amount to bear each month.
The city, especially council members Byron Warren and Terry King, have been attempting to find alternative solutions and have visited numerous other plants, even one in Maine. However, any such plans, such as chemical treatment or utilization of vegetation, have been termed unworkable and unacceptable by engineers.
News, Pages 1 on 10/13/2010