Traverse City Record-Eagle

Grand Traverse County

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  • Douglas Tesner

    Grand Traverse Septage Treatment Center
February 13, 2008

Septage plant's losses may triple

By BRIAN McGILLIVARY

TRAVERSE CITY -- A recent decision by state and federal environmental regulators could triple the losses at Grand Traverse County's septage treatment plant.

But county officials appear in no hurry to address the plant's looming financial crisis.

Last week regulators approved permits to allow CMS Energy to drill a deep injection well in Antrim County's Star Township. The well is part of CMS's cleanup plan for polluted water in Little Traverse Bay, and is caused by water seepage through old cement factory kiln dust beneath luxury homes in the Bay Harbor resort.

CMS currently trucks the water to Grand Traverse County's troubled $7.8 million septage treatment plant, where in 2007 CMS paid the county approximately $454,000 to dispose of the contaminated water. CMS intends to stop regular shipments to the county by no later than the end of 2008, said spokesman Tim Petrosky.

Even with the contaminated CMS water, the county septage plant was projected to lose $1.3 million by 2011. Loss of the CMS shipments jumps its projected losses from an average of $225,000 a year to more than $675,000 a year beginning in 2009.

"It is the number one fiscal problem facing Grand Traverse County and we need a plan to make up that $454,000," said county commissioner Christine Maxbauer.

The county board in October bailed out the plant with a $400,000 loan from taxpayers.

The board also instructed county administrator Dennis Aloia to request proposals from independent, qualified companies to create a long-term business plan for the plant.

Three months passed and nothing happened.

"For the county administrator to drag his feet on this business plan is not my idea of the best administrator in the United States," Maxbauer said. "There must be a sense of urgency."

Maxbauer said every month delayed results in thousands of dollars lost.

"I just didn't have time to get to it; there was too much going on," Aloia said.

County commissioner Larry Inman pushed for the review in October and said he wasn't pleased by the delay. But Inman said Aloia apologized to the board and on Jan. 22 commissioners authorized Aloia to hire the "best person available" to help him put together a request for proposals.

Aloia hired former county administrator K. Ross Childs.

Childs was county administrator while the plan for the septage treatment plant was developed in 2000 and 2001.

"(Childs) is an engineer, understands the background, knows all the people, and has done a lot of requests for proposals as a county administrator," Aloia said.

The plant was supposed to pay for itself, based on fees to treat septic tank waste. But that business plan was based on faulty projections about the amount of septic tank waste produced in Grand Traverse. The county's engineering firm, Gourdie-Fraser Inc., crafted that flawed report, then was awarded a contract to construct the plant.

Entering its third year of operation, the plant receives about half the septage tank waste that was projected.

Chris Buday, director of the county Department of Public Works, said he is working to offset the loss of CMS with other commercially generated waste, but said doing so is a complicated and time-consuming process.

"We have to make sure it doesn't cause problems for the plant or our discharge into the bay," Buday said.

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