The Chesterton Utility’s stated-mandated long term control plan (LTCP) to reduce releases of sewage into the Little Calumet River has been on hold for some years now, since the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) agreed to wait for the Town of Porter to compile data on the amount of flow lost from its collection system through sanitary sewer overflows during heavy rain events.

Those data are necessary to determine how much flow would be going to the wastewater treatment plant if Porter’s collection system weren’t leaky.

And that figure, in turn, is necessary to determine just how big a storage tank the Utility must construct in order to hold wastewater until it can be treated during downpours.

But Porter’s data are now in and the deadline for submitting the LTCP to IDEM is May 1, 2011. With that in mind, the Chesterton Utility Service Board voted 4-0 at its meeting Monday night to approve a contract with engineering firm DLZ to prepare the document itself, at a cost of $64,740. Member Jim Raffin was not in attendance.

The tank itself—whose initially projected capacity of 1.2 million gallons could change after Porter’s flow rates have been added to the equation—is likely to be built on Utility property adjacent to the State Park Little League field, with the hope being to leave the field itself intact even if some parking is lost.

That tank, according to IDEM, must be large enough to store flows for full treatment from a so-called one-year/one-hour rain event or 1.14 inches. The Utility must also be able to provide primary treatment through screening and settling in conjunction with ultraviolet disinfection of flows from a 10-year/one-hour storm or 1.98 inches. In addition, the Utility must provide some primary treatment and ultraviolet disinfection of any flow above a 10-year/one-hour storm.

And that level of storage and treatment is going to be expensive. How expensive? Think millions. Or as President Larry Brandt put it, “We’re not talking cheap.”

Indeed, Brandt appears to view the LTCP process as mandated by IDEM a little like putting the cart before the horse, insofar as both Chesterton and Porter are working on projects specifically intended to reduce the amount of infiltration of stormwater into each town’s collection system. When those projects are completed, the threat of sewage bypasses should be somewhat or even drastically reduced.

So why, Brandt wants to know, is IDEM forcing the Utility to engineer a solution for a level of infiltration which exists now but will not in the future. “I’d hate to pay for a big tank, when after some of this separation is done it turns out you’d need a tank only half the size,” he said. “If you wait until all these projects are done, you’d be building for flow then, not now.”

With a deadline of May 1, 2011, Brandt seems to have been asking that question rhetorically.

It’s been nearly two years since the Utility approached the Indian Boundary Conservancy District (IBCD) about evident infiltration of stormwater into its system, a problem most evident during storms, when flow from the east side of Ind. 49 would converge, overwhelm, and swamp the old Dickinson Road lift station. That lift station has been significantly upgraded and is probably large enough to pump any flow now, yet it remains the case that in some months the IBCD exceeds its allotment of 81,000 gallons per day (gpd) at the wastewater treatment plant.

The IBCD has been reviewing the problem and flow rates have been monitored, but on Monday Brandt expressed his impatience at the lack of tangible results. “I think we have to have provisions for when they exceed their flow,” he said. “They have to buy more capacity.”

“You’d have to amend the current agreement” with the IBCD, Associate Town Attorney Chuck Parkinson noted in response.

“What if they reject that?” Member Andy Michel queried.

“It takes two parties to agree,” Parkinson replied. “That’s why they call it an agreement.”

By consensus members authorized Parkinson and Superintendent Rob Lovell to consider an appropriate amendment to the agreement and to contact the IBCD about it.

In other business, members voted 4-0 to schedule a special meeting at 6 p.m. Aug. 26 to open bids for the new on-site generators at the KAT and Porter Cove lift stations.

In July Chesterton used 58.28 percent of its 3.71 million gpd allotment at the wastewater treatment plant; Porter, 57.21 percent of its 809,000 gpd allotment; the IBCD, 65.22 percent of its 81,000 gpd allotment; and the plant as a whole, 57.85 percent of its capacity.

Last month a total of 884,000 gallons were bypassed during a storm event on July 24, prompted Brandt to remark on the summer’s wetness: 6.82 inches of rain in May (with bypasses totaling 2.5 million gallons); 7.39 inches in June (with bypasses totaling 553,000 gallons); and 6.31 inches in July.

In July the Utility ran a surplus of $220,676 and in the year-to-date is running a surplus of $463,812.

Meanwhile, Brandt promised the Northwest Indiana Paddling Association, represented at the meeting by Gina Darnell, that the Utility would notify the group when it’s bypassing into the Little Calumet River.

The Paddling Association is working to clear a 16-mile stretch of the river from the Heron Rookery to Burns Ditch for use of canoists and other paddlers.

Members took a moment at the end of the meeting to welcome Lovell on board.

“Stay awhile,” Michel suggested.

“We appreciate your taking the job and look forward to a long-term relationship,” Brandt added.

“It’s already been one,” Michel joked.

Members also bid farewell to Chief Operator Dick Condon, who retired at the end of July after more than seven years in the saddle. “He will be missed and we hope he enjoys his retirement,” Brandt said. “And if he feels like coming in on some rain events to help out, he is more than welcome.”

Posted 8/18/2010