Chesterton Tribune

 

 

Morningside aerial sewer support column project ready to start

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By KEVIN NEVERS

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.

 

Posted 6/22/2016

 

 
 
 
 

 

 

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