CHAFFEE FACILITY TO GET UPGRADE

CHAFFEE -- Chaffee's biggest development of 1991 caused a lot of apprehension for city officials.

City voters, though, put that apprehension to rest in November when they approved a $500,000 bond issue for needed improvements to the city's waste-water treatment plant.

"We're headed in the right direction now," Mayor Ron Moyers said. The project, he said, is proceeding as quickly as its engineers and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources can work out minor problems. Actual reconstruction at the plant will begin this spring, he said.

The bond issue is funding the improvements along with construction of a sewer line and lift station along North Frisco Street. The plant's discharge, because of high algae growth, does not comply with state guidelines.

The planned improvements include having the plant's final cell deepened from 3 to 8 feet and having a duckweed treatment system installed to help cut down on algae growth. The duckweed would stem the algae growth by blocking sunlight.

City officials had stressed the city's dire predicament on the waste-water issue before the election, with Moyers terming the issue to be a "do-or-die" situation. The mayor had warned that the state could have fined the city as much as $15,000 a day for violating its standards.

If the success of the November election helped bring about a good end to the year, the death of councilman Keith Moore made for a bad start. Moore, 62, and his wife, Wanda, 59, died Jan. 22, 1991, when Moore's vehicle was struck head-on by a pickup truck on Highway 77 at Oran.

When he died, Moore, of Ward 4, was completing his 19th year on the city council. He owned and operated Moore's Auto Sales and Moore's Standard service station in Chaffee.

In 1991 the city closed out its $57,000 Community Development Block Grant. The grant paid for service roads on both sides of the Columbia Sportswear plant in the city's industrial park.

The city in 1991 also lost its Union Electric office and local line crew. The office closed June 28.

Moyers said: "We weren't real pleased and haven't adjusted to that quite yet. Always before, anytime we needed them, they were there, and the response time was a lot better."

The office was closed as part of a Union Electric plan to establish a centralized call service center in Cape Girardeau.

Moyers said the city is looking forward to a very good year, "barring upsets." Construction of two new bank buildings for the Chaffee branch of First National Bank of Sikeston and The First Midwest Bank of Chaffee will take place, he said. First National is being built at Main and Yoakum, while First Midwest will be built on Yoakum where the old Frisco general office is situated, he said.

Meanwhile, also on Yoakum, across from the site where First Midwest will go up, the Elks Lodge is expanding its present building, Moyers said. "There will be a lot of building going on there in that two-block area," he said.

In addition to the waste-water treatment-plant work and the sewer-line and lift-station construction, Moyers said the city in 1992 will see a water line extension to the south on Highway 77. "We've still got some easement problems to work out, but once that's worked out we should proceed with that very shortly," he said.

The city this year will also enter the fourth year of its projected five-year paving project for city streets. "If things go well in the next two years," said Moyers, "we should have all the blacktopped streets paved."

Despite the anxiety posed by the bond issue, Moyers said the city had a pretty quiet year in 1991.

"We've had a pretty even year no controversies and we hope it stays that way," he said.