INFORMATION #2 07-29-1996 - Laserfiche WebLink

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_)tat T~;Lu~e. -~o..-f.rpol~,'k ~-~ bec ~ ]qq~ A. meansthatinstead,,fproducingaClassA · sludge, our plant would he producing a -,. akefield up the creek . ith' ,EPA bureaucracy gency's sludge rules' make no sense :~ Our city is in a difficult position. In 1994, our city was presented with two "~ On Oct. 31, Lakefield held a bid opening '.J~ r a project to expand the wastewater $ i~atment process and storage capacity of ~ Jif city's wastew,ater treatment plant. !~, Our engineer s estimate of the project }llas $851,000. The lowest bid was .~1,198,000. If you figure about $50,000 for ~.~gineering, that brings the total project to ~out $1.25 million. '~ 'Fo pay for this project, we will have to cbntribute $175,000 in sewer fund and general fund reserves and raise our base sewer rate 200 percent and our per- 1,000- Td!llons rate by 26 percent from what they - ~:~ere in March 1994, when we raised our tes the first time in anticipation of this Srroject. [~, In a normal bidding process, the City -lTOuncil can opt to reject all bids. Unfortu- nately, our council will not have this op- · *~n on this project. We, and other communities like us, are ~,cing forced into expensive wastewater construction projects by the federal Envi- ronmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its state enforcement entity, the Minnesota Pollution Control Authority (MPCA). A few years back, the EPA created new rules called the ~S03 sludge rules," which created new standards for "pathogen re- duction'' and "vector attraction reduc- tion'' As far as we know, this is not a law that was passed by any elected We quesJ~oi~ holll a body; someone at the EPA simply made some J~W wastt~wat~J~ new rules, t ~ In l. akefield's case, ourtreatmen nt forced into doing can be judged an 'this project is not only e l,e,, ive, h.t seems un- excellent performer n eded, one year and in I)uring much of the 1980s, the city plannedneed of costly for conslruction of a new Wastewater treatment renovations the plant. In 1990, lhe new jrjext° $2.6 million plant began operation. Plans for the the potential penalty would be, she facility were approved by both the EPA and couldn't tell me. l'llM~d what WOl41d ~, p(:A ~d If the l~t ~ :~V~,_~ ' the engineer's rlllJliJlil~ts ~Of tl~ ~ ru~es. I asked what would happen to us if we altered our construction project and built facilities for sludge storage only while de- ~ ~t.~t~.+r leting the new treatment process. This awards for operational excellence at our wastewater plant -- one from the MPCA, ~he other from the EPA. On one wall of our City Council's meeting area is a photo- 'gr~lph of the MPC~ commissioner present- 'iflg our mayor and our wastewater plant '61Jerator with one of these awards. The irony is that the same people who '~bre giving us a&ards one year ago will ~Bbw consider us a bandit community if we '~6 not now pursue ibis expansion project. 'We would be exposing ourselves to many &hpusands of dollars in fines if we acted 'ome~ise. Our ci~ isn't saying that the EPA's goal of cleaner sludge is wrong. Wh~,w~ ~ ~ how a ~w w~tewater ~eat-' ,~t,~P~ can be Ju~ed as being ~n~ ~~t"~he ~e~ and In need ~fl~ r~no~~ ~; We question ~~~ving to pay any price, no %~bm~, tn renovate a plato that ~Uld be just barely out of compliaucc e~n when the new 503 rules are applicd. :-" On Nov. 3, I called someone at the MP~ to ask her what the MPCA would do qbout enforcing the 503 rules against us if our City Council rejected the bids for the wastewater plant project for being too costly. She said that we wmfid still have to ~C~mply with thc rules. Wbcn I asked what Class B sludge. I told her that we could do'" that, bul our engineers projected that we couldn't be guaranteed with always meet- lng the new 503 standards for Class B sludge. Sbe said that if we tried for Class B sludge, we would have to "consistently" meet the standards for Class B sludge. I asked what the word "consistently" meant -- did it mean that we could pass eight out of 10 sample tests? She said that we'd have to be 10 out of 10 on sample testing. She then suggested that we tell our engineers to start over again with another construction option such as lime appli- cation. I said that we had been working on our current construction option since mid- I993 and had already spent over $30,000 on engineering fees alone. I said I didn't think it likely that our council would start over, but I asked her what MPCA would do if we changed options and took another two years to get to the point where we are UOYY. She said that we are ah'eady required to be in compliance with the rules now and that our current construction option is al- ready too late. When I poi~tted out that the MI'CA approved the con- strtt(:lion schedule of our ctlrrelll collstruction op- tion and then wondered how MPCA could enforce agaillst tls i! c(}nstru¢:tion schedule Ihat MI'CA bad illready approved, I didn't get much of an answer. Our City Council has until about Dec. 30' to accept a bid on our plant. At this point, I am wondering it' there is anyone out there -- elected person or not -- who has an idea on what we can do as an allernative lo accel)ting this hid. Technically, the governor runs the MPCA. Technically, our members of Con- gress create the laws thai govern the EPA. . [ a~n forced to wonder why solneone can't help us or create some sort of rea- sonabh? accommodation for wastewater plants or other costly government-man- dated projects such ;is this. After all, the Americaus with Disabilities Act (Al)A), which was ('reared by elected people, bas an exemption for public enti- ties if the costs ol ren(,valion to comply with that law create, an undue hardship, but these new "503 rules" don't even allow for that. In the end, "government" is what all of us make it. It is up to those who have the responsibility to govern to decide whether our government will be reasonable or not. We are inviting whatever elected or un- elected officials who care to respond to be reasonable with us. -- Brian Wagner, Lakefield, Minn. City coordinator.