The Springfield News-Sun will continue to provide unmatched coverage of local government and efforts to attract business to Clark and Champaign Counties. For this story, the paper spoke to Urbana city officials about a $19 million water reclamation facility that was intended to set the city up for possible future growth.
By the numers:
$19 million — Estimated cost of project
3 million — Average daily allons of wastewater the city could treat before the project
4.5 million —Average daily gallons of wastewater the city can treat now
Urbana’s roughly $19 million wastewater treatment facility, one of the largest projects in the city’s history, was open for public inspection this week.
The roughly $19.4 million project significantly boosted the amount of wastewater the city could treat, which city officials said is important long-term for the city to attract business and add jobs.
“From a community development standpoint, if we have capacity at the plant that’s good for future growth and development,” said Doug Crabill, community development manager for Urbana. “Some places have maxed out their capacity and can’t accept a new large customer, and I think this gives us the ability to.”
The site has been operational since late last year, but was available for public visits for the first time this week.
Construction took 27 months to complete, said Chad Hall, plant superintendent. The entire project was paid for through a 20-year low interest loan from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s Division of Environmental and Financial Assistance. Residents saw increases in sewer bills to repay the loan, Hall said.
The original facility was about 60 years old and hadn’t seen a major upgrade since about 1975, Hall said. Along with a need to boost the amount of wastewater that could be treated, the aging infrastructure at the property was labor-intensive and expensive to maintain, he said.
Much of the older facility was retained and continues to treat about 1 million gallons per day, while the newer portion of the facility can treat about 3.5 million gallons in an average day, for a total of 4.5 million gallons. During peak times, the old facility could handle 5 million gallons of wastewater compared to 9 million gallons now that new construction is complete.
“The old facility was very labor intensive,” Hall said. “There were no electric controls. It was all manual labor.”
Previously, it typically took about 17 hours from the time water arrived at the facility and could be treated. But in periods of heavy rain, that fell to as little as six to eight hours, Hall said. Now that the new system is in place, it takes about 52 hours to treat the water, meaning fewer contaminants end up in waterways like the Mad River.
“We’re able to meet and achieve our more stringent discharge levels now to protect the watershed,” Hall said.
The city has 7 industrial users including Robert Rothschild Farm, Rittal and Weidmann Electrical Technology that before the upgrade, used close to 40 percent of the water treatment plant’s total capacity. The old facility alone could handle a maximum of about 3 million gallons on an average day and regularly handled about 2.4 million gallons, Hall said. That meant there was little additional capacity in case another large manufacturer connected to the system.
In the meantime, a sanitary sewer line has since been extended to Robert Rothschild Farm as part of an expansion at that company. That likely would not have been possible without the upgrade, Hall said.
“The old facility would not have handled any more industrial development,” Hall said.
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