A required project in Jefferson recently took a major step forward.

The Jefferson City Council approved at its most recent meeting last month to pay engineering firm Bolton and Menk $730,000 for final designs and bidding for the wastewater treatment plant improvement project. City Administrator Mike Palmer says the payment is coming from a previously approved state revolving loan. He lays out how the majority of the now over $13 million project will be paid for.

“Once we’re further along we’ll have to bond for this. Now the bond is paid out of user fees and not general property taxes. People maybe recall, the City Council had to put in place like a five year steady increases on sewer usage fees, so we qualify for this bond and for that state revolving loan fund.”     

Palmer tells Raccoon Valley Radio the overall cost of the project saw about a $3 million increase from the engineering firm’s original estimate, due to supply chain issues and additional equipment needed for the project. Bolton and Menk also increased its contingency to 30-percent, which is the amount of money that is held back in case other issues arise during construction. 

Palmer says a lot of smaller communities, like Jefferson, are having to go through these types of upgrades or completely new construction with wastewater treatment facilities.

“The DNR (Department of Natural Resources) has come out with a new discharge requirements, which (includes) how clean the water has to be to go back into the river. It’s a tough road because it’s a mandatory thing. It’s not like you can just keep putting it off for many, many years and make incremental changes. Some time ago we were faced with either, do we build a new plant or do we try to retro-fit what we have? It came down just to retro-fit is this much money.”  

The plan is to bid the project later this fall and start construction by the end of this year. The project is anticipated to be completed by June of 2024.