GREENFIELD — A plan to build a new wastewater treatment plant in Greenfield is finishing its design phase, and contracts for the project are expected to go out for bidding in March or April of 2021.
Wastewater utility manager Nick Dezelan said the project has been split into two parts, hiring separate contractors for dirt removal and the actual construction, in order to begin site preparation as quickly as possible without waiting for the building design to be complete. Dezelan said he is expecting the design process to be complete by the end of December, and for construction to start in June or July.
“We are working through all the nuts and bolts of the design trying to make sure we’re spending the money wisely,” Dezelan said.
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The project will cost an estimated $39 million and will give the city’s wastewater utility the ability to stay in compliance with requirements of the Indiana Department of Environment Management. IDEM requirements have shifted to limit the amount of phosphorous allowed in wastewater, which the Greenfield plant is not set up to adequately process. The growth of the city also means a greater capacity is needed.
To pay for it, the city will increase utility rates three times over two years.
The first step in the rate increase took place in July, with two more to follow in March 2021 and January 2022. The increases will be in effect for at least the 20-year term of the proposed bonds.
The first step up set the rate per 1,000 gallons at $4.42, the second will set it at $5.22 and the third at $5.90. The base service charges for meters of all sizes would also increase at each step. By the third increase, a typical small residential customer’s rate will have increased by about 87%.
The Greenfield Board of Works has also approved the temporary closure to the public of the city’s brush and leaf drop-off, located near the wastewater treatment plant, in order to accommodate construction traffic. The area will be closed beginning Jan. 1.
The new wastewater treatment plant is only one of several city buildings that will be moved to newly purchased land.
The street department is set to receive a new, more spacious, building at some point, but the project has been pushed back because COVID-19 has made tax revenue, and therefore funding, less available. Since the street department does not have any urgent need to move to a new building, street commissioner Tyler Rankins said, the department is “probably last on the list.”
“I’m hoping to be moved over there in the next five years,” Rankins said.
Mayor Chuck Fewell added: “There will be a new building for the Street Department. We haven’t forgotten them; we just put them on hold.”
Greenfield-Hancock County Animal Management, however, does have to be moved into a new building. The trailers out of which it has operated for years will be removed in order to accommodate the new wastewater plant. A new animal management building will be constructed on property the city owns on South Franklin Street, but for now, the department will have to move to a temporary location.
Fewell said the city is still negotiating to lease a building as animal management’s temporary home.