A contractor could
begin replacing as early as this week the dilapidated aerial support columns
for the Morningside subdivision’s sanitary sewer main.
Those columns carry
the main over and across approximately 300 feet of environmentally
sensitive, officially designated wetland, on its way to the wastewater
treatment plant on the other side of the Little Calumet River.
For Chesterton
Utility Service Board Member Andy Michel, it seems almost too good to be
true, inasmuch as it’s been more than 15 years since the Utility first
identified the threat posed by the crumbling columns.
Working in and
around a designated wetland, however, entails a certain amount of
bureaucratic hoop-jumping and over the years the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers has required the Utility, among other things, to conduct surveys
of flora and fauna and inventories of live trees and dead ones. The Corps
also required the Utility to submit a work-site plan under which temporary
timber “matting” and silt fences would be used to protect the wetland from
construction activities.
Now, at last, all
systems are go, as Town Engineer Mark O’Dell told the Service Board at its
meeting Monday night, and either this week or next Gariup Construction
Company will begin sinking 15 pairs of screw-in helical piers to a depth of
30 feet along the length of the aerial line, which traverses the wetland at
a height of eight to 10 feet.
The project’s
contract price: $197,500.
“I still don’t
believe it,” Michel said.
Re: The McDonald’s
Life Station Explosion
In other business,
the Service Board voted unanimously to approve a full and final release of
all claims connected to the explosion of the McDonald’s lift station on
Indian Boundary Road in June 2014. Remarkably no one was injured in the
incident but significant damage was caused to the facility.
Subsequent
investigation determined the cause of the explosion to be residual gasoline
in the soil on the BP Amoco property across the street, left from a leak
discovered years ago in an underground storage tank and long since
remediated. That gasoline was leaching its way into BP Amoco’s sanitary
sewer service lateral and then carried to the lift station, where the vapors
were ignited by a spark thrown by facility’s control panel. Good Oil, owner
of the BP Amoco, subsequently plugged the old service lateral with concrete
and installed a new one well above the gasoline still in the ground.
Under the release
approved on Monday, negotiated with Good Oil’s insurance company by
Associate Town Attorney Connor Nolan, the Utility accepted a final payment
of $3,708.14 in exchange for which it agreed to forgo any further claims.
Indian Boundary
Conservancy
Meanwhile, members
briefly discussed the state of affairs with the second largest of its
out-of-town customers, the Indian Boundary Conservancy District (IBCD),
which comprises portions of unincorporated Westchester Township. At
particular issue: the fact that the IBCD exceeds its 81,000 gallon per day (gpd)
allotment at the wastewater treatment plant with some regularity: on five
days last month alone.
With some
regularity but also with impunity, because--as Associate Town Attorney Chuck
Parkinson noted--there is no penalty clause in the Utility’s contract with
the IBCD, under which the Utility could assess a fine for overages.
On several
occasions, Parkinson told members, he’s broached the subject of negotiating
a penalty clause into the current 40-year contract, entered into in 1987,
but the IBCD has expressed little interest in any such ex post facto
arrangement.
President Larry
Brandt suggested, however, that the IBCD give more thought to a penalty,
because--with only 10 years left on the current contract--2026 is going to
come around sooner than IBCD officials might think and negotiating a new
contract may prove to be, for them, a baneful experience. “It’s going to be
nasty,” he said.
May in Review
Chesterton used
51.15 percent of its 3,668,000 gpd allotment at the wastewater treatment
plant; Porter, 55.41 percent of its 851,000 gpd allotment; the IBCD, 72.95
percent of its 81,000 gpd allotment; and the plant as a whole, 52.33 percent
of its capacity.
A total of 2.85
inches of rain was recorded at the plant last month but no bypasses of
sewage into the Little Calumet River.
In May the Utility
ran a surplus of $243,455.91 and in the year to date is running a surplus of
$324,029.02.
Well Done, Duneland
Soccer
Member Scot McCord
took a moment at the end of the meeting to express his appreciation to the
Park Department and the Duneland Soccer Club (DSC) for their “wonderful job”
in organizing and hosting the championship tournament on Sunday, June 12.
“I heard a lot of
great comments from other parents in other communities,” said McCord, who
made specific note of the fine work done by Park Superintendent Bruce
Mathias and DSC President Mark O’Dell.