Stunning result provides future

Stunning.
That’s the word that comes to mind in the wake of last week’s announcement that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved nearly $8 million in assistance to the town of Redkey to help solve its combined sewer overflow problems.
It’s as if that little town in Richland Township had won the lottery.
Like hundreds of communities across America, as Redkey developed — moving from outhouses to a sanitary sewer system — the city fathers opted for what was then the most logical and least expensive solution. Sanitary sewer lines were combined with those that carried surface water away after a rainstorm. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
In those days, the rainwater simply helped carry the sanitary sewage to the nearest ditch or creek and that was considered an acceptable solution.
With the advent of modern wastewater treatment systems and growing concern about the quality of water downstream, however, the problems were obvious.
During normal weather, all the stuff carried by the combined sewer system made its way to the wastewater treatment plant, where it was cleaned before it was discharged back to nature. But during a heavy rain event, the system overloaded, leading to overflows of the combined sewers. One good rain could put a community back into the 19th century when it came to environmental management.
Or as a Redkey woman once memorably put it, residents could wake up and find someone else’s feces floating in their backyard.
The problem, of course, wasn’t limited to Redkey. Portland has similar problems as do more communities than we could count.
But Redkey’s situation was complicated by the relationship between the scale of the problem, the small size of the town, the fact that much of Redkey has low or moderate incomes, and the amount the town could borrow via a bond issue was severely limited.
Clearly, this was going to require some creative thinking if it were going to be solved.
That’s where Jay County Community Developer Ami Huffman and the USDA enter the picture. Huffman, in what might seem like a “desperate times call for desperate measures” move, decided to go big. She asked big. She pleaded big. She argued big.
Redkey, she argued, can’t do this alone. The county’s not in a position to help in a meaningful way, not when the pricetag for separating the sewer systems has been estimated between $7 million and $10 million.
Someone, she argued, is going to have to act boldly and that someone should be the USDA.
Now there were those of us who thought asking for that sort of assistance from the federal government was a little like buying a Powerball ticket and counting on it for your retirement.
But a funny thing happened.
The USDA listened. Someone in the federal bureaucracy recognized this project had merit. Someone may have been struck by the audacity of the scope of the request. But for whatever reason, Redkey got the USDA’s attention.
And the result is stunning. Roughly half grant and half loan, the USDA is kicking in nearly $8 million. Redkey’s costs are manageable and amount to credible buy-in.
It’s going to be messy, disruptive, and complicated during construction. But when it’s done, this project is going to give something many small communities have lost: A future. — J.R.

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