GREENE: Carrollton approves loan agreement for city’s new water treatment plant

By Editor | July 19, 2023 |

By Carmen Ensinger

Carrollton City Council members approved a loan agreement with the Illinois EPA and a bond ordinance for construction of the city’s new water treatment plant. Total project cost will be $5,196,000 to build a million gallon per day water treatment plant.
“We will have a pre-construction conference in August and with these two items in place we will then be able to give the contractor the notice to proceed,” Benton and Associates President Jamie Headen said. “There is a construction period of two years so there is a long process ahead.”
Kamadulski Excavating and Grading Co., Inc. of Granite City submitted the low bid of $4.35 million for the project. The project includes constructing a one million gallon per day water treatment plant which will be complete with a new raw water detention tank, green sand filtration for the removal of contaminants, new chemical feed systems, laboratory, control system, back-up generator, remote operation and monitoring capabilities.
It will be designed with energy efficient materials which will result in lower energy costs to operate it and it will be able to operate unattended, which will mean reduced labor costs.
The new filters will be equipped with air scour, a process that uses air to improve the cleaning of the sand filter media while shortening the backwash time and using less water. The all new equipment will mean reduced maintenance costs.
The present water treatment plant was built in 1958 and has gone well past its useful life. With some of the obsolete equipment currently being used, replacement parts are becoming difficult and sometimes impossible to find.
Plus, the current treatment plant building and overall site are not ADA accessible. Masonry block construction, which is what the current building is, was not designed for today’s seismic standards and meeting IEPA standards is becoming difficult and costly with the existing plant.
The water plant provides water to businesses, Boyd Hospital, and schools throughout Greene County. There are a total of 5,435 water customers. Of those, 2,680 are city water customers and 2,755 are Greene County Rural Water District (GCRWD) customers. Carrollton sells water to GCRWD making almost 50 percent of the population of Greene County reliant on this regional water plant.
While almost $5.2 million sounds like a lot, by the time the IEPA Principal Forgiveness of $1,250,000 is taken out and the USEPA STAG Grant of $1,975,000 is factored in, the city only has to borrow $1,971,000 for the project.
This $1,971,000 is being borrowed in the form of an IEPA Low Interest Loan at a rate of .93 for 20 years. Adding the Principal Forgiveness and the STAG Grant, those two amount to $3,225,000 or 62 percent of the total cost of the project.