Plant will get upgrades

Portland’s wastewater treatment plant will get some upgrades.

Portland Board of Works on Friday afternoon signed a contract with Jutte Excavating of Fort Recovery for the installation of two new final clarifiers and other work at the plant.

The bulk of the work is to install two the final clarifiers, which separate sludge from clear water, on the south side of the facility on Shadeland Avenue on the south side of the city. The new clarifiers will be 75 feet in diameter and 16 to 18 feet deep.

Once installed, all of the clarifiers at the facility will be converted to aeration, a system in which air is added to wastewater to allow pollutants to biodegrade.

“We’ve got to put the clarifiers in before we can do anything else,” said wastewater superintendent Bob Brelsford after the meeting.

Once the clarifiers are installed, two trickling filters will be taken offline and demolished. Jutte will also demolish a backwash holding take that is already out of service.

A timeline has not yet been set for the project. The city hopes to know more about those details following a pre-construction meeting at the plant on Nov. 2.

Jutte submitted the low bid of $2.88 million for the project in July. The company came in at more than $300,000 less than the next-lowest of the five bidders.

Jones & Henry Engineers will oversee the project under a $275,000 contract the board of works approved in early September.

The work is part of upgrades that have been recommended by Jones & Henry as part of a state-mandated long-term control plan. Portland was awarded a $600,000 grant from Indiana’s Office of Community and Rural Affairs to go toward the improvements.

Portland City Council in July approved annual sewer rate increases of $5.25 for four years — a total increase of about 67 percent — to help pay for the upgrades.

Also Friday, board of works members Portland Mayor Randy Geesaman, city council president Bill Gibson and Jerry Leonhard also OK’d payment of a $2,500 invoice from H.J. Umbaugh and Associates, an Indianapolis-based accounting firm, for a study of the local tax impact of a change in the way agricultural land is being assessed in Indiana. Portland partnered with Jay County, Dunkirk, Dunkirk and Jay School Corporation for the study, the findings of which were presented during a meeting in August.