Construction cost per gallon of wastewater treated
Versailles - $12 per gallon
Marysville - $8 per gallon
Springboro - $6.75 per gallon
Mason - $5.33 per gallon
Oregon - $5 per gallon
Urbana - $4.67 per gallon
Alum Creek - $4.43 per gallon
London - $4.31 per gallon
Minster - $3.12 per gallon
Source: City of Urbana.
Urbana council members tonight will discuss building a roughly $20 million wastewater treatment facility, a project other cities across Ohio have taken on in recent years to attract growth and to replace or rehab aging systems.
The cost would be $6 million more than earlier estimates, and it would likely mean higher bills for Urbana residents.
Some council members have said, while costly, the project is needed in order for the city to grow and add new jobs. If approved, it would be one of the biggest projects in the city’s history. Urbana’s current facility on Muzzy Road was built in 1955 and often operates near its maximum capacity.
The new facility would be able to treat about 3.5 million gallons of wastewater a day. The older facility would remain in place and combined, they would treat about 4.5 million gallons a day.
Information from the city also shows that, compared to other municipalities, Urbana’s proposal is below average nationally when dividing the cost of the project by the number of gallons of wastewater treated. The national average is between $5 and $6 per gallon, city research shows, while Urbana’s project is about $4.67 per gallon.
“We’re under the national average, but we still need to pay for it somehow,” said Chad Hall, wastewater treatment superintendent for Urbana.
Like Urbana, other municipalities across the state have completed similar projects in recent years for a variety of reasons, including aging facilities and a need to handle more capacity. The cost in other municipalities reviewed by Urbana ranges from as much as much as $12 per gallon in Versailles or $8 per gallon in Marysville to as little as $3.12 per gallon in Minster.
In Marysville, the city constructed a $64 million facility in 2009 that treats about 8 million gallons of wastewater per day. The city was under orders from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to improve its treatment system and eventually settled on a plan to build a new plant between Marysville and Dublin, said Rick Varner, wastewater superintendent for Marysville.
That project was costly because the city’s previous facility, which had been built decades before, had little room to expand. Building the new site outside the city limits added millions to the project, but allowed room for future growth for a facility that now treats wastewater for much of southeast Union County. If necessary, the Marysville facility could be expanded to treat as much as 24 million gallons of wastewater per day, Varner said.
While costly, the new facility offers better technology to keep local streams and rivers clean, and more capacity in case new businesses decide to move to the area, Varner said.
“If you don’t have the infrastructure, you’ve got to build to be able to meet it,” Varner said.
In Auglaize County, the village of Minster built a roughly $7.7 million facility that can treat about 2.5 million gallons of wastewater a day. That facility came online last September, said Dan Harrod, village administrator. He said the village’s previous facility was aging, and was not always treating wastewater properly. It was old enough that it was becoming difficult to find replacement parts when needed, he said.
The village is also the home to a Dannon Yogurt facility that produces as much as 3 million cups of yogurt per day. Herrod said the new wastewater facility was planned with as much as 20 years future growth in mind.
It is not yet clear how much rates will increase for Urbana residents, although city officials have said it is important to make sure the rates remain reasonable. One of the main reasons for the upgrade is to increase capacity, Hall said. At its current rate, the city would not have the ability to treat more wastewater if a large company decided to move to Urbana.
City staff originally estimated the cost at about $14 million, but that rose due to several factors, including the cost of raw materials such as copper and concrete and demand in the construction industry. Much of the project would be paid for through a loan from the Ohio EPA’s Division of Economic Financial Assistance.
If approved, construction could begin as early as July and could be completed in July 2015.
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