Sewer bills are up

Portland residents will need a little more money when they pay their sewer bills this week.

This month’s bills, which are due Sunday, will be the first on which residents will see the result of the recently enacted rate increase, the first of a set of annual increases over the course of four years.

The increase will be used to partially fund a two-phase expansion of the city’s wastewater treatment plant, part of the city’s long-term control planned approved by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

City council approved the second reading of the rate increases at its July 18 meeting, and the hikes will result in a $5.25 per month increase each year for the average family using 4,000 gallons of water a month. The total result of the four years of hikes will be approximately a 67-percent increase.

Council debated the rate increases over the course of two months and finally agreed to the phased-in approach as opposed to a one-time increase.

The increases will generate more than $3.3 million in additional funds to contribute to the $18.8 million in capital improvements scheduled through 2021. The improvements include a two-part expansion of the wastewater treatment plant, which has been billed as a solution to the pair of agreed orders Portland has with IDEM. Additionally, funds will be used to continue sewer separation and improvements to the city’s wastewater infrastructure.

One of the agreed orders stems from dry-weather discharge that occurred in the city’s combined sewer overflows in 2008. The order requires that the city eliminate all of its combined sewer discharges before 2028.

The other order stems from a test that found high ammonia levels at the city’s wastewater treatment plant in 2015, to be rectified as soon as possible. Engineers have cited the plant’s outdated trickling filters as the culprit of the high ammonia levels, and the new improvements would replace the trickling filters with new final clarifiers and added volume to the already existing aeration basin. The improvements would allow the trickling filters to be taken offline.

Jones & Henry Engineers designed the wastewater plant improvements for the city, with two phases of improvements, one beginning this year and the second in 2019 or 2020. The improvements are expected to increase the flow capacity of the plant from its existing 3.2 million gallons a day to 4.7 million gallons a day. According to Jones & Henry, the increase in flow capacity will help prevent future dry weather discharges of the city’s combined sewer overflows in the short term, before they are all taken offline by 2028.

The rate increases will not fund the proposed construction of an equalization basin at the city’s wastewater treatment plant, which could hold excess wastewater during periods of high rain. The construction of the equalization basin is tentatively scheduled for 2026, though funding has not been specified.

According to a sewer rate study from Umbaugh & Associates, Portland’s sewer rates before the increase were below the average for 30 similar sized cities in the U.S., based on population totals from the 2010 Census.

Portland will finance the remaining cost of the capital improvements with $16.1 million in bonds or loans. According to a fact sheet prepared by Mayor Randy Geesaman, the city would pay $543,700 on the bonds and loans yearly, paying the debt off in approximately 30 years.