(Spencer)– City Manager Dean Torreson presented a long-term sewer construction plan to the Spencer city council at their meeting Tuesday evening.
Torreson says the goal is to have adequate storm sewers through all of Spencer by the year 2025.
Currently there are large areas of the older part of town that have combined sanitary and storm sewers, making them prone to flooding during downpours. The four-phase plan calls for the systems to be separated. Torreson says the first phase would be constructed in 2008 and 2009. That would be on the city’s near west side from Grand Avenue to Fourth Avenue west and from the river up to 18th Street. It has an estimated price tag of five and-a-half million dollars. Of that, Torreson says three milliond would come from the federal government; 2.5 million locally, including some special assessments, with the city’s share covered through storm sewer revenue. Torreson says that’s derived from Sanitary Sewer revenue.
This past spring, Torreson and other Spencer officials traveled to Washington, D.C. and met with Iowa’s two Senators and Congressman Steve King. The group talked with the legislators about possible federal appropriations that would assist Spencer with the storm sewer plan. Torreson says their chances of attaining federal funding is “reasonably good” and that money would help with the cost of phase one.
Torreson and other city officials plan on making a return trip to Washington next spring to present lawmakers with the long-term sewer construction plan.
(Story from Danielle Hitchings of sister station KDWD Hot 100 in Spencer).
