City embarks on huge sewer project

The city of Bucyrus is on the cusp of embarking on the largest capital-improvement project in its 193-year history.

The Buffalo Run sewer separation project, expected to take decades to complete at a cost that’s fairly jaw-dropping, is going to make a mess along some city streets. Many of our largest, most beautiful trees will be lost. And every resident will foot the bill for this huge undertaking through higher sewer rates.

But the public-relations challenge for city officials doesn’t stop there.

“It’s all going to be underground, no one’s going to see it, and it’s going to benefit other communities besides us, up the Sandusky River and along Lake Erie,” Bucyrus Mayor Jeff Reser said.

“But we’re being good citizens, and it’s something that we have to do. We have no choice. We’ve talked $40 to $80 million, long range, to do the whole city over the course of 30 years.”

The work began this winter with the removal of several large trees along Plymouth Street, in preparation for sewer separation there, although the bulk of the project will be tied to the Buffalo Run, a ditch that ran through the center of town in the 1800s that’s now a large, brick-lined storm water and sewer line that drains into the Sandusky River.

“It’s mainly trying to build a trunk over on Southern, Oakwood and Woodlawn avenues. So we’ll have three stages. We’re looking to pull all the sanitary sewers out of all these streets into these three trunks, basically. And that way the Buffalo will become storm water only,” city service-safety director Jeff Wagner said.

On average — it depends almost entirely on the weather — the city’s interceptors become too full and overflow anywhere from 30 to 40 times a year. The U.S. EPA is requiring the city to get that down to 10 to 11 times annually.

“The first thing will be the interceptor. We have it in the budget to clean it, make sure it’s OK, and then the next step would be Southern and Hopley avenues. Plymouth Street is thrown in there, really has nothing to do with the Buffalo, but we get credit for it,” Wagner said.

Although the EPA sewer-separation requirements, affecting communities large and small all across the street, go back several years, they’ve been given new impetus by the toxic algal blooms that have begun to afflict Lake Erie each summer. Bucyrus, with the Sandusky River running through town, is in the western Lake Erie watershed.

“This has been in the news in Bucyrus for 10 years or more. The algae issue seems to be more runoff from fields, and with manure and fertilizers,” Reser said.

“People know that when the EPA is coming, certain things are going to be expected. And people are different today, they’re interested in a clean environment, recycling is very big here. We’re going to have to be able to sell this to them. There’s no money, that’s the problem.”

A few years ago, the U.S. EPA asked Bucyrus for an omnibus sewer-separation plan extending over 25 to 30 years, at a cost of $25 to $30 million.

“That easily escalates to about $100 million when you start factoring in inflation,” Wagner said.

“Now they’re happy with a five- to seven-year plan, and then you renew it. It’s not like we haven’t been doing separation,” he said, citing Plymouth Street. “They’re just happy that we’re doing something.”

The city recently handed over its first plan to the feds, and is hoping to learn of its approval any day now. At that point, the city can institute a new fee structure to pay for the sewer work and start collecting money.

“We’re going to do a fixed fee and then a rate increase to kind of spread that out,” Mayor Reser said.

The monthly fixed fee would be $7.20, with a 3 percent rate increase if approved.

“My rate is $10.80 a month. It would cost me 30 cents,” Wagner said.

The mayor said the city can expect to see the benefit desired by the EPA once the entire separation project is complete in about 30 years. And, there could be some hiccups along the way.

“With our residents getting older, and with the water rates going up a little bit, our fear is that they’ll use less water. The way our old sewers are set up, they’re not going to get enough water and then we’ll have problems,” Wagner said.

“If they’re not using a lot of water and they’re not flushing their toilets often enough, the storm water’s not going in there anymore to keep it flushed out so now it could lay in there. That will add expense for us because we’re going to have to go around and flush them out.”

Reser said that isn’t a far-fetched prospect.

“Berlin, Germany has had the same issue. What they were doing was throwing deodorant packs down the sewers to make sure Berlin smelled good,” he said. “It’s a smaller scale, but we could be dealing with the same thing. We can flush them. We’re blessed with an abundant water source.”

And Bucyrus is just about to get an even better one, with a new $28 million water treatment plant set to go up alongside the Outhwaite Reservoir north of the city. The current plant, built in 1948, is literally falling apart. In addition to paying higher sewer bills, residents will soon be confronted with higher water bills as well, to pay for the new plant.

“I think this kind of ties in with having our city ready for the future. You don’t have to go too far in any direction to see some cities that are having some struggles. We’re all having budget issues. But you can also see which ones have a plan,” Reser said.

In the short term, however, some parts of Bucyrus are going to have less shade come summertime, starting with Plymouth Street.

“Every time you replace a sewer or separate what you have, if there’s some big trees in the right of way some will come down. Typically, the silver maple is the worst because its roots will find the sewer lateral and just ruin it. We’re not going to spend millions of dollars and leave trees up,” Wagner said.

“And we have a tree program. For every tree that comes down, the resident can request two.”

As for the mayor, he lives on Plymouth Street.

“We have a lot of old, old trees there, and some of them are still up. That was a big concern,” Reser said. “I’ve told the residents on Plymouth Street that I will personally come and plant trees.”

thill3@nncogannett.com

419-563-9225

Twitter: @ToddHillMNJ