(Milford)– The Iowa Great Lakes Sanitary District has some additional capital projects in the pipeline over the next couple of years.
Sanitary District Superintendent Steve Anderson says one of those involves the replacement of a lift station on the south side of Big Spirit Lake…
“That will start here in January. That lift station takes, I would say, probably two thirds of the load from the city of Spirit Lake and then it’s also taking a big portion of the houses up around Big Spirit Lake. That is the first phase of our Big Spirit Lake Improvements Project that we’re going to be doing probably over the next eight to 10 years where we’ll be working on pipes, working on lift stations all the way up and around Big Spirit Lake to get some equipment up in that area that needs to be replaced, make some increases in capacity on some of those lift stations as we do that over the next ten years.”
Anderson says other projects involve the replacement and upsizing of lines that bring wastewater into the treatment facility from the east and west, as well as the center core feeder main from the north…
“Contractors have moved in and they’re going to start that. That’s replacing a 30 inch pipe that isn’t at capacity but it’s at the end of its useful life because of the materials that were available at the time when that project went in. We’re putting in two 36 inch pipes side-by-side that will be able to take all the flow. We’ll be able to move flow back and forth for maintenance purposes. The materials we’re using are a more robust material for using with wastewater and so we expect a minimum of 50 years but it could be as high as 100 years on that.”
All total, Anderson says the Iowa Great Lakes Sanitary District has some 40 million dollars in projects contracted out over just the next couple of years alone.
As we reported last week the Sanitary District’s Board of Trustees recently approved a series of rate increases in coming years to help cover the cost of those and future projects.
