The Montgomery County Board of Commissioners will receive over $4.6 million to improve the City of Union’s wastewater treatment plant as part of the fifth round of Ohio’s Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Grant Program.
With this money, the city will begin phase two of improvements to the plant. This project is expected to benefit 6,700 residents of the City of Union.
John Applegate, the Union City Manager, explains that the facility needed to be upgraded to meet current EPA standards.
“The last expansion was done in 1982. We knew to get our permit renewed; we had to make improvements.”
Applegate assures residents that the treatment plant is meeting the permit requirements, and the new permit is currently under review by the EPA.
The grant will require that the City of Union match the state for $500,000 of the grant. This money will come from the city’s sewer fund. Applegate says that residents will experience a slight increase in taxes.
“We have to come up with $500,000 for a match.The rest of it’s grant money. Basically, we will have to have a small increase to raise that money. But, for what we’re getting in return, it's huge.”
The exact amount that sewer fees will be raised has not been decided.
New additions will include:
- Two aeration tanks
- An influent flow distribution system
- Positive displacement blowers
- An irrigation and recirculation pump station
- Suction piping
- Irrigation pumps
- Recirculation pumping
- A tertiary disc filter
The new improvements should reduce short-circuiting and provide flow splitting.