NewsMay 24, 2016
City cuts ribbon on new transfer station, sewer plant
Ribbon cuttings for the city of Cape Girardeau Public Works Department's new transfer station and wastewater treatment plant took place on Monday morning. Cape Girardeau mayor Harry Rediger, city manager Scott Meyer and public works director Steve Cook made remarks at both facilities, constructed as part of an effort to comply with new regulations from the Department of Natural Resources...
Ribbon cuttings for the city of Cape Girardeau Public Works Department's new transfer station and wastewater treatment plant took place on Monday morning.
Cape Girardeau Mayor Harry Rediger, city manager Scott Meyer and public works director Steve Cook made remarks at both facilities, constructed as part of an effort to comply with new regulations from the Department of Natural Resources.
In his opening remarks, Rediger said the new facilities create a "campus of infrastructure that will serve our citizens for many years to come."
Transfer station
It was well known among the city staff and city council a new transfer station was needed, Rediger said.
"It was old, it was broken, it was outdated, and it happened to be in a bad location, too," he said.
But there was no funding for the project.
The city partnered with waste-disposal company Republic Services to build the facility that cost just under $4 million to complete, Cook said. The city owns the facility and will process the waste at the new station, while Republic Services leases space there and hauls the waste to the company's landfill.
According to Nicolette Brennan, public information manager for the city, the partnership with Republic includes an office lease of $5,000 a month, fuel purchases and use of the transfer station for their private waste-hauling operation, providing an estimated $12,000 in monthly revenue. By opting not to compete with private lugger services, the city stopped offering a discounted service, which made $30,000 per year available toward the project, Brennan said.
Meyer said the "hybrid" arrangement of public and private entities allowed the city to build the facility without raising fees and without additional taxes.
"Republic was in a place where they needed to get a new transfer station, and when we said we needed a new one, too, I think that piqued their interest that maybe we would do this together," Meyer said.
The income provided through the arrangement with Republic, and $1 million from the casino fund, made the financing of the new transfer station possible without an increase of fees or taxes, Meyer said.
The new transfer station features a single-scale system with traffic lights to control the entrance and exit of vehicles that need to be weighed.
During a tour of the facility, Mike Tripp, the city's solid-waste superintendent, said he hopes to see a move into a two-scale feature in the future.
The current facility processes over 100 tons of waste per day. With the introduction of the new facility, that number will jump to 180 tons. But the new four-bay transfer station can hold considerably more than that if the situation calls for it. The new four-bay transfer station can hold 500 tons of material at a given time, Tripp said.
The materials then are loaded and taken to Republic's landfill in Dexter, Missouri.
The old transfer station will be used to process yard waste.
"We have a grinding company that comes in and grinds everything up and turn it into mulch. They haul most of it off, but we also provide some to the park for residents to use," Tripp said.
The new transfer station is expected to be operating sometime next month.
Wastewater facility
The ribbon-cutting at the new wastewater treatment facility represents the city overcoming one of its greatest challenges.
"Several years ago, the city was in non-compliance with the state for bypassing wastewater treatment during peak wet weather events," Brennan said in an email.
The previous wastewater treatment plant couldn't handle the deluge of water and sewage that would flow through during heavy rains, and water would drain directly into rivers without treatment.
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In addition, a plague of sinkholes made an expansion impossible, Brennan said.
"Solutions were not easy, nor were they inexpensive," Meyer said in his opening remarks.
In 2011, voters approved an increased sewer charge to help fund the new treatment facility. The vote passed with 80 percent approval. Residents saw their bill increase $20 to $25 each month, a cost Meyer said was tempered by the capital improvement sales tax.
"It could have been much, much more," Meyer said.
"This facility was made possible by our citizens," Rediger said.
The facility, which features four treatment structures and an administration building, came online in December 2014.
The old treatment facility had a 7 million gallon capacity, with a maximum capacity of 17.5 million gallons, Cook said during his opening remarks.
The new facility has nearly 11-million gallon capacity, with a maximum of 50.
"So we're good for a long ways down the road. We can treat all the wastewater with no bypassing," Cook said.
Wastewater treatment coordinator Todd Fulton led a tour of the facility after the ribbon-cutting to show the route the water takes before it is returned to the environment.
Treatment labs, a control center and a few offices are in the administration building, along with a presentation and conference room.
The first stop for wastewater entering the new system from the city's 32 lift stations is the headworks station. There, raw sewage is pumped through screens and other mechanisms.
Mechanical and biological treatments take place in the sequencing batch reactor, a large concrete structure with four open basins, each about 25 feet deep and each with the capacity to hold 2.5 million gallons of liquid, Fulton said. Each basin features small disks about 12 inches the bottom with tiny holes that push air through the water, which is part of the biological treatment.
The sediment processed out of the water at the sequencing batch reactor goes to the biosolids station, where the water is removed through a drying process that creates tiny pellets, which the city intends to sell to offset energy costs.
"We're going to bid it out," Cook said during the tour. "We'll have about a one-year trial period where we'll give it away. But after that year, we plan to bid it out, and after that whoever got the best bid can get a tractor trailer and take it all."
The final step for water treatment, before it enters the pipe that will take it to the Mississippi River, is ultraviolet disinfection. Fulton said they chose the ultraviolet option over their other option, chlorine, for safety purposes.
According to Bob Nelson, a representative for Trojan U.V., the ultraviolet light damages organisms in the water immediately, whereas chlorine requires contact time before the water is safe to flush into the environment.
The system is automated. If something malfunctions, the monitoring system sends a warning to the computer system or to cellphones. The treatment facility and the transfer station have backup generators so they can continue operating even if the city loses power.
The new wastewater plant cost nearly $60 million to complete.
"Well below the projected $72 million," Cook said.
The old facility is no longer in service, and the facility and grounds next to it are under contract to sell, Cook said.
bbrown@semissourian.com
(573) 388-3630
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2055 Corporate Circle, Cape Girardeau, MO
2061 Corporate Circle, Cape Girardeau, MO
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