Redkey sewer bidding open

REDKEY — After more than a decade of warnings, fines, citations and — most importantly — a long search for funding, improvements to Redkey’s sewer system will begin this summer.
Bidding is underway for Redkey’s estimated $7.9 million sewer separation project, which will be funded mostly through a grant and a loan from the United States Department of Agriculture.
Contractors must have bids turned into town hall for the sewer work, which has been a need for the town for as long as anyone can remember, by May 19. Town council will likely review the bids at its regularly-scheduled meeting that evening.

History
Redkey, like many small communities in Indiana, has been dealing with the issues of its combined storm and sanitary sewer system since at least 2005. Because the same sewer lines are used for both purposes, they can become overtaxed during times of heavy rain.
The result is that untreated sewage is discharged from the town’s seven overflow sites and the wastewater treatment plant into Redkey Run, a waterway that connects with Halfway Creek southwest of town and eventually flows into the Mississinewa River south of Albany. Backups from manholes and toilets inside homes have also been an issue.
It was in 2005 that a representative from Indiana Department of Environmental Management warned Redkey Town Council that it had 120 days to make some significant progress toward correcting the situation as part of an agreed order to solve the problem.
That progress was difficult to come by.
IDEM fined Redkey $825 in April 2005, but sewer issues were placed on the back burner in 2007 because of needs for updates to the town’s water tower, plant and mains. Those problems were also drawing warnings and citations from IDEM.
The town and IDEM seemed to be alternately cooperating with and at odds with each other. Redkey was hit with a $2,800 fine in October 2011 and then cited in October 2012 for unsatisfactory record-keeping and a lack of adequate preventative maintenance programs.

Funding
Though the town was fined and cited for its failure to comply with the agreed order, local officials say the inaction had nothing to do with whether or not they wanted to address the problem. It was all a matter of dollars and cents.
Redkey, with a population of less than 1,400, simply did not have the bonding capacity to raise the amount of money needed to fix its sewer problems.
Its bonding limit is about $2.4 million.
“They turned in long-term control plan after long-term control plan, and because they couldn’t finance the long-term control plans, IDEM would reject them,” said Jay County community development director Ami Huffman. “So they didn’t have one that was even accepted by IDEM for a long time.
“Until we figured out how to get it funded, it was going to be rejected … because the bonding power just wasn’t there.”
Town council, with help from Huffman, looked at a variety of different grant and loan programs. But they kept coming up short — typically they were able to find no more than half of the money that would be needed for the project.
So, they threw a “Hail Mary pass.”
Huffman’s research showed that some states don’t use the USDA Rural Development funds that are allocated to them, and when that happens, other states can apply for the excess funding. She made a call to U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar, who was on his way out of office in 2012.
Lugar was sympathetic to Redkey’s plight, agreeing to make some phone calls and ask Sen. Dan Coats to carry the torch for the town in the future. The process took time, but in June 2014 the town finally got good news — the USDA would provide nearly all of the funding needed to separate its sewers.
Redkey was awarded a $3.9 million grant and a $3.8 million low-interest loan. The town would be responsible for the remaining $206,000 up front.
“It ended up working,” Huffman said. “It was a long time before we heard it was going to work. I just kept thinking, we haven’t been told ‘no’ yet. … And then one day it all came through.”

Sewer lines
Work on the sewer lines themselves will make up one part of the project, with more than 35,000-feet being replaced or installed.
The bulk of the sewer work will involve making use of current sewer lines without digging them up and removing them. Instead, sleeves will be placed in those lines, accounting for nearly 26,000 feet.
Video was taken of all of the sewer lines in town to determine which ones could be salvaged.
“We looked at where they had cracks, where they had leaks, where the pipes are showing distress but they haven’t necessarily collapsed. So those are the lines we can sleeve,” said Mitch Hansel of Fleis & Vandenbrink, the engineering firm that handled design for the project. “And then wherever it had a collapse or a dip in it, then we’re calling for that section to be dug out and replaced.”
The longest stretches of sleeves will be on Union Street between High and Sherman streets, on Wayne Avenue from just east of Meridian Street to Butler street, along a north-south alley parallel to Meridian and Spencer streets from Vine Street to Main Street and along an east-west alley that runs parallel to Main and High streets between George Street and the eastern edge of town. There will also be extensive sleeving on the west side of town on and around Delaware Street.
In terms of new lines, workers will be adding more than 4,200 feet of storm pipes ranging from 12 to 18 inches in diameter and nearly 4,000 feet of sanitary sewer lines ranging from 8 to 12 inches in diameter. They will also be replacing 1,365 feet of current lines, 800 feet of which involve storm sewers.
The longest stretch of continuous sewer line replacement or installation will be on Boyce Street between Oak and Ash streets, Ash Street between Boyce and Main streets, Main Street between Ash and Union streets and Union Street between Main and High Streets. Other long stretches include several bocks of High Street in the area of Elm Street, Central Avenue from Elm Street to the east and from the south end of Elm Street to the wastewater treatment plant in the southwest corner of the town.

Plant upgrades
While the sewer line work along Redkey’s streets will be the most visible to residents, the sewer separation project also includes extensive upgrades to the town’s wastewater treatment plant.
Part of the work will be demolition of current parts of the plant, including the grit channel, chlorine contact tank and cascade aerator. Some piping, mechanical devices and electrical infrastructure will also be removed.
A new headworks building with an in-channel fine screening mechanism and grit removal will be constructed. Among other new items will be dry-pit submersible influent pumps, rotary lobe sludge pumps, oxidation ditch equipment (used to add oxygen to ammonia in sewage and changes its chemical makeup), rectangular clarifiers (used to remove suspended solids from sewage), ultraviolet disinfection units, cascade aerators (they add oxygen to wastewater) and a mixing system.
The facility will also get heating, ventilation and cooling upgrades, as well as new plumbing, concrete, masonry, roofing, paint and controls and instruments.
The plant work will both modernize the facility and increase its capacity.

Impact
Many municipalities, including Portland, have had to take a piecemeal approach to solving their sewer problems, fixing one area at a time and gradually making progress toward the goal of eliminating CSOs. Redkey’s issues will be dealt with all in one project.
“The big benefit is less years of sewage going into (Redkey Run),” said Hansel. “By taking care of it all in one shot, they won’t have to continue to fill out all this paperwork, continue to be under an agreed order. They’ll just have it solved, taken care of, and move on …”
That will take some time, as the sewer work is projected to last nine months and the plant work 14 months.
Hansel is hopeful that the sewer replacement could be done more quickly — by the end of 2016 — but that will depend heavily on the contractor that is selected and if the weather cooperates. He said the worst-case scenario is that the final work on sewer lines and pavement patching will be handled in spring 2017.
“I think they’ve got a good plan of action so the town is not totally disrupted,” said council member Doug Stanley. “There’s going to be some discomfort, but everybody in town knows that’s coming. So that’s not going to be a big surprise.
“There’ll be some griping. There already is, but it will be as painless as possible. And we’ll be the better for it when it’s done.”