A New Issue!

1. County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry supports the recommendation. “You only replace a sewage facility once every 50 years,” he says of the Roger Road treatment plant, “and that requires a huge capital cost.”
   Ha! Give that 50-year figure to the locals here in the PNW town I now live in and they would cheer. We had a 10-year-old sewage plant go out of compliance due to more rigorous EPA NPDES regs and the city was trembling at the idea of replacing it. (A lawsuit for dumping sewage into the river had partially to do with this, but nonetheless the new regs appear to be what changed everything). They’ve since decided to build a “send it elsewhere” sewage line to Everett (Wash.)
   Shameless self-promotion: http://snoho.com/newspix121008/Sewer.html
   It otherwise would have required potentially spreading $38 million in cost across 9,000 residents (that would be $320/two months or nearly $2,000 a year for the sewer rate; currently residents pay $118/two months or $708/year).
   Huckelberry is correct that to build a new plant requires huge capital costs — no matter how you build it, the upfront will be huge. Building a whole new plant is different than upgrading it like they’ve been plodding along doing so far — I wonder if through the new construction they will install new technologies that better filtrate the sewage to meet Arizona standards.
   I suspect so: “The Roger Road WRF is aging and is difficult to retrofit with new facilities that are capable of meeting the effluent goals, while meeting all environmental requirements and odor control,” notes the ROMP report.
   Keep in mind I’d be talking crap (not just figuratively) to claim what kind of success any of the major sewage treatment options can provide over the current systems that need replacing.
   From the Nov. 2007 ROMP, it looks like new systems will go in at the Roger Road WWTP and Ina Road WWTPs. What kind?
   Reading the article’s sentence snippet “the county intends to replace the existing Roger Road plant with a smaller treatment facility while also adding laboratory and staff space” suggests to me that the county will be going with a fixed film (IFAS) system, which offers a smaller footprint and moderate capital and O&M cost levels among the technologies available.
   This is just from a cursory look at the ROMP compared to the article though, so no intent to bring wrong facts to the table.
   On the plus side for me, I’m on a septic tank. 😉

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