Saline gearing up for 3

Brian Rubel with the engineering consulting firm Tetra Tech presents renderings showing what the final product of a major set of improvements to the Saline Wastewater Treatment Plant will look like during Saline City Council's Monday, June 6, 2023 meeting.Captured from Saline City Council meeting

SALINE, MI - Gleaming metal pipes. A solar array. A new headworks building and hulking wet weather storage tank.

For now, they’re all just computer-generated models and schematics on hundreds of pages of plans, but Saline is nearing the beginning of a major, nearly three-year construction project that will make the upgrades to its aging wastewater treatment plant a reality.

During Saline City Council's Monday, June 7 meeting they whizzed through a flyby tour showing renderings of the estimated $62-million improvement project and got updates on its design and timeline.

"We’ve got our permits in hand, and we have the green light to proceed," said Brian Rubel, with the engineering consulting firm Tetra Tech, working with the city on the effort.

The city is currently seeking bids for the improvements, based on 350 design drawing sheets and more than 1,800 pages of specifications, he said. They’re due in June, and City Council is expected to award the project to a contractor in July.

The improvements — meant to address equipment failures and operational roadblocks at the plant, which dates back to 1955 — are scheduled to get underway in September, with final completion at the end of June 2026, according to Rubel.

"We’ve talked a lot about how we need to get this done, but we want to do it the right way, we want to make sure all the steps are correct, so that we can maintain being a growing city and looking toward the future," said City Council Member Nicole Rice during the Monday meeting.

The construction will include a new headworks building with mechanical screens for automated cleaning and new pumps. It will also bring a new maintenance building, a new primary and secondary clarifiers and a blower building and aeration tanks, according to Rubel's Monday presentation.

The project calls for a new wet weather storage tank, which will control peak flow at the plant during heavy rain storms and high-water events — something that's caused current operational concerns, Rubel said.

"During storms, now we’re giving that water a place to go," he said.

The Saline Wastewater Treatment Plant, 247 Monroe St. in Saline Monday, Feb. 18 2019.MLive.com

Some of the issues at the plant landed the city in hot water with state environmental regulators, and the city agreed in 2021 to pay a $100,000 fine stemming from violations at the facility dating back to 2019, while disputing the enforcement process that led to them.

Officials have worked with engineering consultants to evaluate whether to build a new plant altogether or tackle the upgrades to the existing facility, which discharges in the Saline River.

Some buildings will be relocated and expansions will occur with the improvement project the city ultimately chose to pursue, though it will remain at the same location, 247 Monroe Street, officials say.

The city has estimated the first phase of improvements, meant to handle existing community needs, will cost $62 million, with another $19.6-million phase slated to prepare the facility for future demand.

Read more: Saline seeking state loan for $86M in wastewater treatment plant, sewer upgrades

Officials have sought a low-interest loan from a Michigan state fund to pull off the project, and Rubel outlined ongoing efforts to foot the bill on Monday.

"Prices as everybody knows are not decreasing these days, they’re just going up," he said, adding that officials have included some phase two elements in the bid for the improvement project to get prices, some of which can be subtracted if necessary.

The city has $6.2-million in loan forgiveness through the Michigan Clean Water State Revolving Fund and has applied for $1.5 million grant through a state program aimed at preventing high water damage, Rubel said.

The city's three federal representatives, U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell and Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, are supporting federal earmark requests ranging from $1 to $5 million this summer, and future requests are also an option, he added.

"I just want to reaffirm that those are not the only dollar amounts that we are reaching for. There are other pots of money out there," said Rice.

Saline has upped its water and sewer rates to pay for upgrades to the ailing wastewater plant and sewer infrastructure, a bumpy process that resulted in outrage from some residents.

On Monday, some city leaders questioned some of their engineering consultants working on the massive project over the long-term value of the upgrades.

Council Member Dean Girbach asked representatives with Arcadis, an engineering firm that has reviewed plans and current plant operations, over whether the upgraded plant would be dependable in the coming decades.

"It's a big improvement over what's current right now," said Fred Simmons, an Arcadis engineer. "They’ve implemented tried and true technology."

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