City financing to boost fix for sewage plant’s odor concerns

PORT HURON — As the city looks to borrow millions to help finance long-term improvements to its sewage disposal system, one big cost on tap will be a permanent fix for concerns about the foul smell sometimes emanating from the wastewater treatment plant downtown.

Port Huron City Council members OK’d issuing up to $19.5 million in revenue bonds during Monday’s meeting. Among the list of improvements were new sanitary pump stations, clarifier tanks, and other interior upgrades in the city’s aging plant.

Part of that, officials said, is a new odor control system .

However, City Manager James Freed said they didn’t expect to need the total bond amount outlined in the city’s notice of intent, and that what they do use would be borrowed over time rather than all at once, avoiding paying a 4.5% interest on funds while waiting for projects to get underway.

“This is a lot of money,” the administrator told council members. “We have a host of capital projects that have to be done. Our plant was built in the 1950s. A lot of major components are coming to their end-of-use life cycle, so we need to be planning. This is supposed to be about a 36-month list of projects. The notice of intent is for 19.5. We have to put the absolute worst-case scenario. We don’t believe we’ll actually reach that amount. But should we get something catastrophic, I can’t go back and change the intent. So, I have to put the market on notice that we’ll be issuing up to 19.5 in bonds.”

“There will be several issuances as the projects (go) through design, bidding, construction and completion,” Freed added. “One of the major components will be five to eight million dollars for the new odor control system that’s being designed for the wastewater plant.

“… But again, it’s the screw pumps, it’s the gallery pumps, it’s the retention basin, piping repairs, the really important stuff in the wastewater plant. These were planned capital projects. This was something we’ve been looking at for several years. It will not require a rate increase to facilitate.”

Councilwoman Anita Ashford asked about the risk of issuing bonds. In response, Freed referenced the 10 years in capital planning and three and a half years in financial planning that helped prepare their recommendation to ensure it was the right move.

Mayor Pro Tem Sherry Archibald asked about the odor control system’s rollout to eradicate residents’ concerns about the smell at-times plaguing anyone downwind of the plant.

“I imagine design for the next six to nine months. Then, bidding, and then, completion,” Freed said. “I believe it’s going to be 24 to 36 months from the time we started a couple months ago until actual completion.”

Council members signed off on a new engineering agreement with the firm Fishbeck Inc. in May for an odor control study at the wastewater facility — weeks after Freed first previewed the need for a new system after another reportedly failed.

Officials had also accepted two settlement agreements this spring, helping the city regain costs from the roughly $2.2 million overhaul of odor control first approved in 2020 .

After Monday’s meeting, Public Works Director Eric Witter said engineering officials were still conducting air monitoring and collecting data as part of the odor control study.

“Because the warmer months are the most odorous,” he said. “So, this is the time to collect all the air samples throughout the plant.”

Officials said that mitigation steps had already been taken to keep the odor under control in the mean time. Freed said they believed concerns about the issue had “dramatically dropped.”

Councilman Bob Mosurak who lives downtown nearby the pant said he’d visited a recent farmers market — a weekly assembly of vendors now gathered in the Quay Street lot across from the wastewater plant — and that there appeared to be few complaints among attendees.

Freed said the new market location was working out “so well,” and that officials were in conversatiosn about a long-term facility there for future seasons.

Contact reporter Jackie Smith at jssmith@gannett.com .

This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: City financing to boost fix for sewage plant’s odor concerns