By Nate Smith, Staff Writer
Standing at a retention lake on the north end of Washington, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But look closer, and one would see a $10,000 riser that saves the city close to $30 million.
Mayor Larry Haag and members of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management gave the press a tour Tuesday of areas where the city is saving money and saving a few basements and yards along the way.
“We are looking at Washington’s proactive approach to the control issues they have,” Scott Nally, former Montgomery resident and current assistant commissioner of External Affairs with IDEM, said. “This is just good common-sense engineering.”
The first part of the tour was the Viola Avenue Retention Basin, where runoff from 275 acres of land north of the city is stored. From one inch of rain, a total of 7.465 million gallons of water runs off that land and ends up in the basin.
If the basin overflows, then the water goes across Viola and into basements and homes near the pond. In March, the city stormwater department installed a new riser limiting how much water the city takes in its storm sewer.
Before, the sewer would take in 4.5 million gallons a day after a rain of 1.3 inches. Now, the city only takes in 500,000 gallons after that rain.
At the city’s other reservoir, the rainfall from 125 acres goes down from 9.7 million gallons to 960,000 gallons for a 1.3 inch rain.
Haag said the risers were good engineering that will save taxpayer money in the future. Along the tour, the phrase most uttered was “common sense”
“It’s going to save us $30 million in design,” Haag said.
The $30 million part of the $70 million or more the city planned in 2007 for the separation of stormwater and sewer. Haag changed the city’s combined sewer overflow, or CSO, plan when he became mayor in 2008. The total cost of the plan now is abouty $22 million over 20 years.
“Once we finally sat down and put the pencil to the calculator (the design) worked,” Haag said.
Nally echoed Haag’s statements, saying the technology was one of the first steps towards getting the city is good cost savings. He termed the project “common sense green.”
“Traditionally, this water would sheet down and flood basements and front yards,” Nally said. “Now the city is allowing to control that.
“This was great engineering. Common sense.”
An added benefit, Stormwater Superintendent Scott Rainey said at Monday’s City Council meeting, is less worry about flooded basements.
“We’ve had some steady rainfall, but so far we’ve had no calls for flooded basements,” Rainey said. “In past years, we’ve had a few calls, but this year we’ve had none.”
The second and third stops on the tour were the site of the Oak Street interceptor and the proposed site of the controlled wetland. At Oak Street, the city is planning to build a 3.8 million gallon stabilization basin, or a large underground concrete tank, that would catch stormwater from larger storms.
After the water gets an initial treatment at Oak Street, it will move to the wetland where it will be treated by natural plants and algae before it goes into the White River.
“We are not going to build for a worst-case scenario, we are going to know the worst-case scenario,” Haag said.
Nally said the project is something that can be used statewide. There are 107 combined sewers in the state and the cost of treating combined sewers affects cities and towns nationally.
“This solution seems to be one of the more cost effective solutions we have seen,” Nally said.
