City has clearer long-term picture

The City of Portland has a clearer picture on how to satisfy its most expensive long-term control plan.

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management approved a revision to the city’s plan for sewer separation and mandated wastewater treatment plant improvements, among other upgrades, in the spring.

Projects included in the plan are projected to cost the city $20 million, with currently no funding mechanism in place via state or federal grants to pay for any of it.

Portland Mayor John Boggs said if the city is unable to secure any grants to help pay for the work, it would be seeking bonds to fund the projects in the short-term.

Wastewater superintendent Brad Clayton said phase two of wastewater treatment plant upgrades — projected to cost $7.9 million — is contingent on how much more efficient the plant is after it builds a new equalizing basin and a new pump station.

Those two projects, expected to cost $5.4 million, are to be completed by the end of 2022, per the plan. Clayton said the projects would help the plant handle a larger amount of what he called “raw materials.”

“There’s a lot of contingencies here after we do the next upgrade what route we will go,” Clayton said.

“We’re currently out of the doghouse with IDEM,” Boggs said.

IDEM allowed the city to delay some of the planned projects until later in the decade so it can attempt to secure funding and plan for how to complete these upgrades.

The plan was first approved by IDEM in 2008. Projects completed since then include new sewers along Boundary Pike, new sanitary sewers on the north side of Portland and improvements to the wastewater treatment plant.

Portland, like Muncie and many other Indiana cities, is in the middle of an expensive overhaul of its sewers and separating the single pipe drains into one for stormwater and another for sewage.

It has separated many of its sewers but it still needs to handle the system under Harrison Street, a project set to be completed by the end of 2024 and projected to cost $1.7 million.

“It’s just so expensive,” Clayton said.

In addition to paying for the overhaul to the sewer system under Meridian Street, Boggs said he hopes to pay for mandated projects through grants from the state Office of Community and Rural Affairs.

In order to be eligible for OCRA grants, totaling up to $500,000, the city must establish a stormwater tax, Boggs said. In September, Portland City Council approved the tax and Portland Board of Works approved a $10,000 contract for Baker Tiller, a consulting firm, to help figure out how expensive the tax should be.

In a 2019 study provided as a guide to the city, Baker Tilly reported the average residential stormwater tax was $5.62. As of 2010, the average rate for cities with a population between 5,000 and 10,000 was $5.97 a month, according to the study.

Board of works is scheduled to meet Dec. 3.