The projects are a part of a 20-year plan to reduce overflows in order to comply with Clean Water Act regulations.
City Manager Bruce Woody said that those projects have brought the city closer to complying with the Environmental Protection Agency and Missouri Department of Natural Resources regulations.
“Every time we get one of those projects completed, the amount and frequency of those overflows is reduced,” Woody said. “We’re making progress toward our goal.”
According to Woody, before the effort to reduce overflow was started, sewage combined with stormwater overflowed into the river about 78 times a year.
In 2015, 52 combined sewer overflows were recorded, and 21 have been recorded so far in 2016.
Assistant Director of Public Works and Transportation Andy Clements said it can be misleading to focus on the number of events.
“The actual numbers of distinct overflows vary by year,” Clements said. “A telltale sign is that many events overlap, corresponding to a single, extended overflow rather than ‘x number’ that’s strictly associated with an event.”
The amount of water dumped into the river per overflow is not measured, but will be once the projects are completed.
Woody said overflows should be down to about six times per year by the time the projects are finished.
In a recent community survey released by the city, it was indicated that public approval for the city’s sewer and storm water maintenance has declined.
The approval rating for St. Joseph’s quality of stormwater runoff/management dropped 11 percent since 2014, from 41 percent to 30 percent, and the quality of city water and sewage utilities approval rating dropped from 45 percent to 35.
Woody thinks that rising sewer rates may be causing the disapproval, and the stormwater projects are causing the rates to increase.
“There’s been really two things driving increasing rates,” he said. “One of them is the completion of projects regarding our combined sewer overflow program and the other are just regulatory changes in our department. Those types of things have affected everybody across the state.”
Sewer rates are expected to increase by 11 percent in 2017 and again in 2018.
An additional project to reduce overflows from six per year to four is in the city’s long-term plan, but won’t begin for another 15 to 16 years.
The project involves the installation of a “deep tunnel,” or underground basin, that will store overflow water until it can be sent back to the treatment plant.
The project was projected to cost $350 million in 2006, and Woody hopes new technologies or changes in environmental policy will prevent it from happening.
“I’ve long argued that, that particular project doesn’t make a whole lot of dollars and sense,” Woody said.
©2016 the St. Joseph News-Press (St. Joseph, Mo.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
