The Henderson City Council paved the way for a sewer rehabilitation project in hopes of rectifying a recent spate of overflows by approving acceptance of a $2,542,553 loan from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF).
The matter was on the consent agenda at the council’s Mar. 8 meeting, and City Manager Terrell Blackmon said he recommended accepting the money to address the needs of the city’s sewer system. The 20-year loan comes with 0 percent interest rate, it was noted in agenda information from the council.
This move comes in the wake of 40 reported sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) between February 2020 and September 2020. The council made an application for funding back in mid-September to the CWSRF. Since August, the state has gotten the equivalent of a year’s worth of rain, which have worsened the sewer overflows.
The city’s on-call engineer WK Dickson played a key role in preliminary work to get the funding. According to information from the city, “WK Dickson’s continued support with this next phase is critical.” Their ‘outside the box’ infrastructure approach to bid the work with unit costs based on the find-and-fix approach…should make this a cost-effective approach to infrastructure repair and replacement.”
The collaboration between engineer and contractor to identify needs will inform repair costs based on a unit price bid. All the items that will need to be replaced or cleaned – manholes, sewer lines and broken pipe – will be put into a bid schedule for the lowest bid contractor. So, when workers “find” where repairs and replacements need to be made, contractors will be paid for the work to “fix” the problem as they are identified until the money runs out.
“The total funding amount … will cover the engineering and construction costs, and at 0% interest, this will increase our sewer rate by 3% or the equivalent of $1.52/month per residential household, assuming an average consumption of 5,000 gallons of water per month,” according to the information from city officials.