By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
With the City of Burlington facing another Department of Natural Resources pollution control mandate Tuesday night, Alderman Jon Schultz said what seemed to be on many people’s minds.
“What, it’s an unfunded mandate?” said Schultz. “Shocking.”
The City Council on Tuesday night approved staff to work with engineering firm Baxter and Woodman, as well as City Attorney John Bjelajac, to draft a hearing request with the Wisconsin DNR for a site-specific phosphorous discharge limit at the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
The request comes after the city applied to renew its Wisconsin Pollution Discharge Eliminate System permit back in September of 2013. In December, the city finally received the renewed permit – but with the phosphorus discharge limit set at .1 milligram per liter rather than 1.0 milligram per liter.
If the city applies for a site-specific phosphorus limit, it would allow the city more leeway and a larger timeframe to work with reducing already-low phosphorus discharges, Director of Public Works Craig Workman said. Background phosphorus levels appear low enough to allow the city to make a good enough argument for the site-specific limit, Workman added, if some operational changes are made at the wastewater treatment plant.
If the state does not allow the site-specific limit, the city could be required to spend roughly $5 million on another treatment plant upgrade.
In recent years, the city had to install radium removal filters to lower the amount of the naturally occurring element in the city’s water wells.
The cost of the staff work on the project is projected at $2,500, with another $100,000 possible for future studies and submittals.
Dump studies
The council’s Committee of the Whole discussed the bi-annual spending of about $49,000 to monitor the city’s former landfill.
The monitoring – both the amount and duration – is required because of state regulations, though Workman said engineering firm Kapur and Associates has worked to lower the amount of samplings and tests from the annual monitoring.
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