Nitrogen treatment at sewage plant on committee agenda
KINGSTON, N.Y. » A Common Council committee on Wednesday will consider whether to recommend borrowing up to $1.2 million to design an “options plan” as part of an effort to treat nitrogen at the city’s wastewater treatment plant on the East Strand.
City Engineer Ralph Swenson said he will ask the Common Council’s Finance and Audit Committee to endorse the borrowing so an engineering firm can be hire to perform the work. The full council and Mayor Steve Noble will have the final say.
The Finance and Audit Committee is to meet at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in City Hall, 420 Broadway.
Swenson said he will not suggest any particular firm be hired because interviews with those that submitted proposals are not complete. He said four firms, which he did not identify, were expected to be interviewed by a selection committee by the end of this week.
The four proposals range in cost from about $700,000 to $1.2 million.
Six consulting firms submitted proposals to draw up the options plan before the field was narrowed to four.
Swenson has said the city is looking for options for how to carry out the statemandated nitrogen treatment for possibly less than the current $7.9 million estimate.
The options plan also would examine the possibility of the nitrogen work being done in conjunction with other required work to separate the city’s stormwater and sewage flows, Swenson said.
“The first step in that plan is to determine exactly what we have to do to comply,” Swenson said. “[Then] is the DEC (state Department of Environmental Conservation) going to hold fast, and are there other processes that we can employ that will do the same thing?”
Once an initial report is completed, the company selected for the options plan will be employed to create a fuller design plan.
The Common Council in February authorized the city to seek grant money to help offset the $7.9 million cost of the required improvements at the wastewater treatment plant. Lawmakers unanimously adopted a resolution authorizing the city to apply for up to $1.25 million for the work in the form of a New York State Water Infrastructure Improvement Act grant.
Swenson has said Kingston will apply for that funding if it fails to win approval for 40 percent reimbursement of the estimated cost of the project from the state Intermunicipal Grant Program.
Swenson has said the treatment plant improvements are necessary due to a change in the city’s Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit from the Department of Environmental Conservation.
The city was notified of the change in late October 2017. The new discharge parameters go into effect in approximately 3½ years, Swenson said in a letter to Common Council President James Noble.
Swenson said the state is requiring the city to treat for nitrogen above and beyond what it currently does, which will necessitate changes in some of the processes at the East Strand plant.
The city currently is involved in an unrelated repair and upgrade project at the treatment plant that’s estimated to cost $3.3 million. Much of the cost of that work is expected to be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency because some of the repairs and upgrades were necessitated by flooding during Superstorm Sandy in October 2012.