Toledo mulls $4M project to haul away lime

Year-long process part of plan to fix water treatment.

Toledo taxpayers likely will have to pay $4 million to haul away 10,000 truckloads of spent lime — a by-product of the city’s water-treatment process — to make way for two new 20 million-gallon-aday basins, the Hicks-Hudson administration said Tuesday.

Toledo City Council considered the request during its agenda review meeting.

Warren Henry, the city’s water program manager, said the cost is included in a $500 million price tag to fix and modernize the Collins Park Water Treatment Plant, the low-service pump station, and other improvements along its water treatment system.

It will take a year to remove all of the spent lime from the 40-foot deep lagoon, Henry said.

“Time is of the essence to get this material out of the lagoon,” he said.

Henry said the Ohio Department of Natural Resources mandated the lagoon embankment be moved to make way for the two new basins, which are part of the plan to increase water treatment capabilities at the plant.

Custom Ecology of Ohio Inc. of Mableton, Ga., will remove the spent lime and ship it to other places in Ohio to be used as fill or other reuses, he said.

About $100,000 of the $4 million will be used to move the embankment.

Councilman Lindsay Webb, chairman of council’s committee that oversees infrastructure, said spending the $4 million was necessary and pushed for council to approve the expenditure during its regular meeting next week.

Six spent lime lagoons are at the city’s drinking water plant.

In January, council unanimously voted to spend up to $4.5 million this year — up from about $1 million it cost annually in the past — to haul away spent lime from the drinking water plant. The money comes from the city’s water-operating fund.

The city was slapped with a notice of violation late last year by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for the condition of the lagoons at the water treatment plant.

In other business, council reviewed a request to spend $190,000 from the city’s capital improvement fund to buy radios and body cameras for the police department.

Council next week could also vote on a resolution supporting the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department’s plan to create “syringe-access programs,” which are meant to decrease transmission of diseases and reduce drug overdoses.

The health department board voted unanimously in July in support of starting a needle-exchange program that will be administered at two sites.