By: Diane Benjamin
When I talked to Randy Stein and Tim Irvin they provided more information I haven’t written yet. See this story: https://blnnews.com/2020/01/30/sewage-talk/
Randy told me at some point, nobody knows when, the IEPA is going to require updates to the plant on West Oakland. He has no idea what the exact cost will be but he said it could be $150,000,000.
Yes that’s $150 million!
IEPA does offer low interest loans. Randy claims they have current loans that will be paid off soon, so basically it will be starting all over again with debt.
If you want to get more informed about what they do:
It is amazing how many gallons they process a day and how much it varies from month to month. Downs has also been added to the system.
I wanted clarification for who owns which sewage pipes. The cities own and are responsible for the ones your house connects to. Those connect to much larger pipes that use gravity to transport the waste. BNWRD owns those.
Individual homes aren’t supposed to connect directly to BNWRD, but according to this email at least one does. This person is charged a flat rate for service instead of paying based on water usage.
One more:
At some point I found out water billing at the City of Bloomington had been moved from the Water Department to the Finance Department.
I asked City Manager Tim Gleason for an explanation. He asked Finance Director Scott Rathbun to explain:
Billing was transferred in the Spring of 2019, around the same time it was discovered Fire Protection wasn’t billed correctly. Those letters went out last March: https://blnnews.com/2019/03/20/huge-bloomington-error/
I think billing always should have been in the Finance Department. They should however reconsider the massive increases they have planned for Fire Protection. They existed for years without it.
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