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Steve Meyer: The overflow control plan only addresses wastewater improvements.
Steve Meyer: The overflow control plan only addresses wastewater improvements.

DNR approves $200M overflow control plan

Posted online
As the saying goes, “You’ve got to spend money to save money.”

City and county officials might add a solid plan helps, too.

Government officials plan to spend and save a lot over the next decade and beyond as they work to meet federal and state environmental regulations.

In 2011, local efforts took shape when the city approved its $50 million Early Action Plan to implement stormwater-system improvements and replenish reserve funds. That plan has raised sewer rates over a seven-year period ending in 2017.  

This month, a second wave of upgrades was approved when the Missouri Department of Natural Resources signed off on the city’s $200 million Sanitary Sewer Overflow Control Plan. City Environmental Services officials say the wastewater infrastructure improvements would save ratepayers between $400 million and $600 million over a 10-year period.   

The strategy is to repair or replace problem pipes rather than install a new system with increased capacity for handling sanitary sewer overflows, which are prohibited under the Clean Water Act.

City officials estimate sewer rates would need to increase roughly 6 percent annually after 2017 through the end of the 10-year plan. But there are another $1 billion of potential area expenses still on the horizon. And the looming expenditures are nothing unique to Springfield.

St. Louis officials agreed to $4.7 billion in upgrades, and Kansas City is forecasting $4.5 billion over 20-some years. More comparable to Springfield, Fort Smith, Ark., plans to spend $255 million to upgrade its sewer collection and treatment system over the next 12 years to reduce discharges of raw sewage and other pollutants into local waterways, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Local compliance
Last year, officials with the city, county and City Utilities estimated up to $1.6 billion in air, water and land-use improvements are needed, a figure that included area technology and system upgrades projected to be coming down the pike to meet EPA rules.

“The $1.6 billion is what we anticipate potential regulations could cost Springfield over the next 20 years – that’s air, drinking water, stormwater, wastewater, and solid-waste and land issue,” said Steve Meyer, Springfield’s Environmental Services director. “The overflow control plan just addresses wastewater in that projection.”

Among looming regulations, new ozone-level standards are expected by Missouri DNR in October, Meyer said, and a host of air quality rules are slated to be implemented between 2020 and 2030, which would impact emissions from CU’s coal-fired plants.

To address existing and future regulations, officials began developing an integrated plan in March 2013 to find ways to reduce costs. They assembled an Unfunded Environmental Mandate Affordability Task Force comprising area residents, a DNR staff member to provide technical guidance and officials with the city, county and CU. The 10-member group included Chairman Rob Dixon of the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce, Roseann Bentley of the Greene County Commission, Skip Jansen of the Board of Public Utilities and Jared Rasmussen of engineering firm Olsson Associates Inc.

Meyer said the overflow control plan is but one piece of the integrated plan, which he described as a living document that would change as needed.

“We are just chipping away at each issue as it comes,” Meyer said. “It is an expensive plan, but it’s less expensive than it could have been.”

A focus of the overflow control plan is keeping stormwater out of the wastewater system, he said.

“Some of the larger cities are beginning to look at what we’re doing. Initially, they were just building capacity instead of keeping rainwater out, but they are starting to look at more innovative techniques to reduce costs for themselves,” he said.

Sister cities
Missouri DNR spokeswoman Steph Deidrick said each community plan is different.

“As different municipalities have differing systems and financial capabilities, the complexity, specific projects and schedules are customized to their situations. It is typical for these programs to be multiyear, focus on the highest public risk area first and require significant efforts from a financial perspective,” Deidrick said via email.

She did not respond to follow-up questions about how many communities in the state are facing system upgrades.

In Kansas City, improvements are hitting ratepayers much harder, according to water officials there. An EPA agreement on system upgrades estimated at roughly $2.5 billion in 2008, is now projected to cost more than $4.5 billion over the 25 years of implementation.

Terry Leeds, director of Kansas City Water Services, said its system comprises 2,800 miles of sewer lines – stretched end to end – with about 900 miles of those being larger, combined systems to handle stormwater and wastewater.

He said the Water Services division is working to fix deficiencies in its current system first, then expanding capacity where needed. Leeds said Kansas City officials have become familiar with Springfield’s integrated plan, and they plan to learn more on July 10 when Springfield Environmental Services Assistant Director Errin Kemper is scheduled to visit.

“He’s going to talk with us and Johnson County, Kan., about developing an integrated plan,” Leeds said. “We are trying to learn what we can from Springfield about that integrated planning process, which is a fairly new process the EPA is allowing communities to use, so they can get the most bang for their buck.”

Kemper said city officials have been involved in over 35 presentations the past two years where integrated planning has been discussed or furthered – with most meetings involving stakeholders. Those presentations have stretched to interested parties in Washington, D.C., St. Louis, Iowa and Nebraska.  

Leeds said the goal of bringing Kemper to town is to find any opportunities to reduce the billions of dollars in system upgrades Kansas City faces.

“We began raising our [wastewater] rates in the late 2000s,” he said. “We just finished five years of 15 percent rate increases per year to pay for the program. Now, we are facing six to seven years of 13 percent rate increases.

“The burden on our customers is pretty high and growing.” [[In-content Ad]]

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