City wins $478k grant for wastewater upgrades

Rags, gloves, grease, hair and dentures, all of it trash and all of it ending up in Libby’s wastewater system over the years.

The potential for refuse to gum up the works prompted city officials last year to apply for grant funding for a bar screen, a device designed to essentially strain the liquid heading into Libby’s wastewater system. On Feb. 18, City Administrator Jim Hammons announced Libby had secured a $478,000 Delivering Local Assistance state grant for the project.

“This was a great thing for us and I know our guys are going to be happy,” Hammons told city councilors last week. “It was a great thing to get.”

With the grant awarded, wastewater engineers are compiling a list of potential vendors, Hammons said. Once that is finished, the project will go out to bid, he said.

Officials put in for the grant nearly a year ago. City councilors recently approved a sewer rate increase, but the system has been a net drain on the municipality’s coffers for years, Hammons said. There was no way Libby could afford the upgrade — even though it would help save dollars spent on unclogging the wastewater system — on its own, he said.

Officials recently spent $12,000 on getting a sludge digester cleaned and inspected, for example.

When originally built, the wastewater system included a bar screen, Hammons said. But it constantly required work and employees eventually removed it, he said.

Given advances in technology, Hammons expects the new bar screen will save the community on future wear and tear costs.

“It’s going to be right at the headworks, where the inflow comes in,” he said “We’re able to clean it there and we’re able to save our pumps, because [trash] goes all the way through our system. It has the chance to plug up pumps all the way through the system.”

Though the debris cluttering the wastewater system represents an ongoing problem, Hammons said the city has never mounted a public awareness campaign designed to discourage residents from discarding the wrong items into the system. Usually, officials reach out to offenders if and when they can determine where the refuse originates.

Medical gloves, for instance, likely come from the health department, local clinics or the hospital. Hammons said that restaurants disposing grease into the system also has caused headaches.

“If we get five-gallon buckets of gloves and rags … we know these came from you,’ he said, admitting an informational campaign might prove useful.

“We’ve found false teeth — you just never know what you’re going to find in the sewer,” Hammons said.

Mayor Brent Teske, speaking before the city council on Feb. 18, predicted the bar screen would prevent future headaches.

“It’s going to take out a lot of problems in the plant at the beginning — the hair and waste and whatnot,” he said.

The $478,000 comes out of a pot of about $21.5 million the state legislature set aside for infrastructure improvements. In a letter sent to City Hall announcing the award of the grant, Gov. Steve Bullock wrote that the state received 191 applications totaling nearly $83 million.

The grant Libby received does not require matching dollars, Hammons said. But future grants might, he warned, which was part of the reason officials sought to raise sewer rates. A portion of the revenue will get set aside for grants that require local matches.

“There is a whole list of items needing to be addressed down there,” Hammons said. “The collection system, our mains — there is a lot of main work that needs to be taken care of. Our sewer was going in the wrong direction in terms of financing. We had to do something. We had to raise rates. Nobody likes it.”