Decatur Daily Democrat:
Faced with an unfunded mandate to spend anywhere from between $1 million and $2 million to remove additional storm water from its sanitary sewers, Decatur officials have come up with a plan to comply while reducing its total outlay: Do a great deal of the work "in house."
The plan, unveiled at Tuesday night's city council meeting, gained the unanimous approval of council. What it will do is significantly reduce the cost the city would have to put forth to hire an engineering firm. Eventually, such a hiring will be necessary, but local officials figure they will save a good-sized chunk of money before that becomes a fact.
At council's meeting two weeks earlier, Ben Adams, an engineer with Commonwealth Engineers of Fort Wayne, made public the mandate bad news. After two major — and expensive — sewer projects to separate storm water and sanitary water in recent years, the city was left with three combined sewer overflows (CSOs). During unusually heavy rains, some of the rain water overflows through them into the St. Marys River.
Faced with an unfunded mandate to spend anywhere from between $1 million and $2 million to remove additional storm water from its sanitary sewers, Decatur officials have come up with a plan to comply while reducing its total outlay: Do a great deal of the work "in house."
The plan, unveiled at Tuesday night's city council meeting, gained the unanimous approval of council. What it will do is significantly reduce the cost the city would have to put forth to hire an engineering firm. Eventually, such a hiring will be necessary, but local officials figure they will save a good-sized chunk of money before that becomes a fact.
At council's meeting two weeks earlier, Ben Adams, an engineer with Commonwealth Engineers of Fort Wayne, made public the mandate bad news. After two major — and expensive — sewer projects to separate storm water and sanitary water in recent years, the city was left with three combined sewer overflows (CSOs). During unusually heavy rains, some of the rain water overflows through them into the St. Marys River.
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