CITY UTILITIES
Progress continues with the City of Gray’s new wastewater treatment plant that hopefully will allow the city to lift its moratorium for new sewer connections within city limits soon.
City Superintendent Cheyenne Morgan talked about the plant’s progress in a Jan. 25 interview, during which he elaborated on his report at the Jan. 22 meeting of all committees. Morgan said he anticipated that the new plant would be operating soon, and it would run with the old plant for several weeks to make sure everything is running as it should.
He said, after they are confident the new plant is operational, the old plant would be shut down for a complete rehabilitation. That rehab includes reseeding the plant, which means adding the bacteria that make the plant work.
The superintendent said the sediment pond that is used during high flows would be connected to the new treatment plant.
He said, after the old treatment plant is shut down, it would be assessed to determine the extent of rehab needed. Morgan said each of the plants has a capacity to treat 400,000 gallons a day, and after both plants are online, the city will be permitted to treat 800,000 gallons a day.
He said at that point, the moratorium for new connections can be lifted.
“I think it could be completed by March or April, but that may be wishful thinking,” he said.
New well
Morgan also mentioned that he received the analysis report for the city’s new water well that morning, and everything looks good. He said the new well has the potential of producing 125 gallons a minute, which would be significant for the city.
“It could produce 60 million gallons a year, and that would save the city a lot of money,” he said.
The superintendent said the next step in construction of the well would be completion of a survey.
“We have two big projects going at once. We have our plate full with a lot of good stuff going on,” he said. “Normally, water and sewer news has been bad, but both of these projects will really help the city.”
WWTP history
To say the construction of a new wastewater treatment plant for Gray had been on the drawing board for decades is no exaggeration. Gray’s wastewater woes date back to 1999 with its first consent order from the Environmental Protection Division.
That consent order was not lifted until 2003.
The plans for a new wastewater treatment plant have been ongoing since that time, but the cost has been the ongoing problem. The city applied for a loan through the USDA in 2010 for a 1.2 MGD wastewater treatment plant with a $12 million price tag. A change in USDA leadership before the loan was approved put the brakes on the project.
The new USDA leadership determined the city would only qualify for a 0.8 MGD plant. After years of negotiations, the city withdrew its application in 2015 and decided to work on infiltration and inflow issues in the aging sewer lines.
After three years of growth in the city and increased rains, Gray’s city council found themselves back in the familiar territory of needing to expand the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
Not only did the problem not go away, but the EPD also added another consent order. At a Feb. 11, 2020 meeting with consulting engineers, council members were told that, even if they corrected all the I&I issues with the system, their wastewater treatment plant would still be operating at 70 percent capacity.
With the ever-increasing cost of construction, engineers presented the city with another option: the construction of a smaller 0.4 MGD plant coupled with the rehab of the current 0.4 MGD plant that together would give the city the needed 0.8 MGD capacity.
That put the city back to the drawing board with financing, ultimately being approved for a $9 million GEFA loan in October of 2021. The loan amount was increased to $10.5 million at a Jan. 24, 2022, called meeting, and the bid for the project was awarded to the Haren Construction Company at the same meeting.
Groundbreaking for the new plant took place May 3, 2022.
