Tia Lyons
Staff Writer
EL DORADO — The El Dorado Water Utilities is gathering information to come up with a proposal and cost estimates for a comprehensive study for needed upgrades to the city’s wastewater infrastructure.
Engineering consultant Lorraine Murtha said on Wednesday that the report will include information about the wastewater collection system and treatment plants.
Information about the north and south waste water treatment plants will be one of the most anticipated results of the study, said utilities manager Mark Smith.
“It’s going to give us a road map for our treatment plants — what it’s going to take, the cost, do we remodel the treatment plants or build a replacement plant? This will give us the best possible solution,” Smith said.
The matter has been on the table for a number of years and was one of the focal points of discussion during the years-long effort to build the multi-user wastewater pipeline to the Ouachita River.
The pipeline ferries treated wastewater from the water utilities and its industry partners — Great Lakes Solutions, Lion Oil and El Dorado Chemical — to the river.
The discharge line is owned and operated by the water utilities. It went online in 2012.
The purpose of the project was to help the participating partners meet increasingly strict environmental laws for discharge limits for the smaller tributaries into which the pipeline partners had been depositing effluent.
The project was sold as a cheaper alternative — for the water utilities and ratepayers — to upgrading the waste water treatment plants.
However, the utilities and the El Dorado Water and Sewer Commission have long said the waste water treatment plants would still require improvements because they have outlived the 25-year shelf life for which they were designed.
One of the plants was built in 1977 and the other in 1978.
Over the years, cost estimates for upgrading the plants have ranged from $40 million to between $80 and $100 million.
On Wednesday, Commissioner Pete Parks said the $40 million estimate ($20 million per plant) is more than a decade old.
Murtha said the comprehensive study will also give the water utilities officials a clearer picture on inflow and infiltration issues with wastewater lines.
For 18 months between 2014 and 2015, the city was cited for nearly 50 sanitary sewer overflows, which were largely due to equipment failure.
Infiltration of debris and tree roots was among several reasons — others included damaged manhole covers, contractor errors and grease build-up — to which the cause of the overflows were attributed.
The city utility was required to submit a corrective action plan to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality last December.
Murtha said water utilities crews are televising and cleaning wastewater lines and will soon begin smoking the lines and studying flow patterns to help determine some of the larger problems.
Lines that cross creeks and storm sewers can sometimes cause inflow and infiltration issues, she said.
“That we can fix. The more we can eliminate needless I&I, the cheaper things will be. (The comprehensive study) will give us plans of action from one to 20 years to implement step by step,” Murtha said.
She said engineering firm Burns & McDonnell will be working on the project, noting that the firm previously conducted a similar study on the water side of the water utilities’ infrastructure.
The EWSC also agreed to look into options for a back-up generator for one of three new lift stations that were recently installed.
Smith said two recent power failures at Lift Station No. 2, which is located at the end of Shadow Lane, contributed to two sewer overflows.
Commissioner Bill Luther, who is also customer service manager for Entergy’s El Dorado office, said broken utility poles on South Jackson Road caused one of the outages.
Smith and Kenneth Robertson, wastewater collection foreman, said the two outages occurred within the past 30 days, and one lasted for four days.
“I had been told that there have been power failures (at the lift stations), but they have not lasted longer than 30 minutes,” Smith said.
Robertson said it takes 20 to 30 minutes for an sewer overflow to occur at lift station No. 2.
Murtha said No. 2 is in the most remote area of the three new stations, and the others pump into it.
Smith said that even if an overflow occurs during working hours, it would take crews about an hour and a half to bring the portable generator onsite.
He said that when the lift stations were installed, there had been discussions about whether or not to put generators at each station.
“The (Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality) hasn’t told us to put generators in, but we’re trying to be proactive. Should we put at least one at pump station 2? … I feel like we’d be foolish to let this go and not address it,” Smith said.
He and Murtha said the Arkansas Department of Health “wants us to have generators everywhere,” but the ADEQ holds the authority to enforce such a measure.
Smith said he would put together cost estimates for purchasing a new, portable generator or buying a one to permanently place at the No. 2 lift station.
Tia Lyons may be contacted at 870-862-6611 or by email at [email protected].