All of us, but particularly anyone who’s lived, done business, or simply spent time in the general area of the Pleasant Valley bridge just north of Highway 20, should feel some satisfaction at the news that the city is moving forward with construction of a new wastewater treatment plant.
As reported on page 1, the City Council has essentially pulled the trigger to get this project moving, giving staff the green light to solicit bids to start get the new plant started.
The current plant, as we’ve reported in the past, was built in 1947 – 75 years ago, and has had one major upgrade since, in 1974. That’s 47 years ago. The city’s population has roughly tripled just since that upgrade, let alone the original construction.
As we’ve also reported in the past, the current facility is literally falling apart and is patched together in places with second-hand equipment the city has procured from other sources, like Lebanon, which completed a brand new sewer plant in 2019.
The purpose of the city’s sewage treatment plant, of course, is to process wastewater and sewage (the stuff that comes from street runoff and our bathrooms and kitchen sinks) to reduce bacteria and other pollutants so it can be safely released into the South Santiam River.
The fact that Sweet Home’s plant was built when the community was a third the size it is now, and that it is so old that operators can’t even get parts for some of the equipment, has contributed to situations in which the city has been forced to released untreated wastewater, called “effluent,” into the river during storms, when rainfall is such that it overwhelms the plant.
In 2001 – that’s 21 years ago – the city reached an agreement with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to address ongoing wastewater system overflows and discharge violations primarily caused by inflow and infiltration in the collection system, which is water that enters the sewer system through deteriorating pipes and cross connections with storm drainage.
The city spent some $15 million during the following 10 years in four phases to repair and replace sewer lines, reducing the amount of I&I entering the system, and city officials began seriously looking at plant upgrades to increase capacity.
Four years ago the council approved a $788,000 contract to get design work started on the project.
Well, here we are. It’s time.
This plant isn’t going to be cheap. And it’s going to take time. As anyone who’s built anything in the last couple of years knows, material and labor costs have skyrocketed in the construction industry.
But this is necessary, and Sweet Home’s just going to have to bite the bullet and get it done.
As described in our story in this issue, the plan is to complete the project in phases, which makes sense, given that costs likely will continue to rise and materials aren’t always readily available. We should know in a month how things are looking, price-wise.
Fact is, the new facility will hopefully solve some problems, including diminishing the odors that tend to emanate from the current sewage plant, especially on hot days when, due to decreased volume coming into the plant (no rain), staff members clean holding tanks. We’re told the new plant will have more enclosed tanks, which might alleviate that problem a bit.
But although those odors can be bothersome, the real purpose of this new plant is to accommodate the volume of sewage that we residents of Sweet Home produce, and that’s going to be key in cleaning up our act with the EPA and keeping people downstream happy.
Sweet Home has waited a long time for this and that wait has proved costly, but it’s about to be over.