By Marney Simon | Enterprise Staff
Village trustees have taken care of some housekeeping measures aimed at keeping things running smoothly at the wastewater treatment plant.
Earlier this month, the village board approved a handful of public works purchases specific to the plant.
The board approved the purchase of alum at 93.9 cents per gallon, a continuation of the current contract with USALCO. That contract allows for an increase in pricing based on the consumer price index, however, no increase was made for this year.
Alum is used to remove phosphorus to levels below one part per million from water which is cleaned and returned to the environment.
“It actually encourages algae to grow,” said Director of Public Works Allen Persons. “A few years ago, the DuPage River had quite a bit of algae over the summer, it really wasn’t that clear. So, from the city of Naperville and Plainfield, we’ve done a lot better job at removing phosphorus from the release water and cleaning up the river in that regard.”
Public works utilizes the alum to push the phosphorus out of the water, allowing the plant to comply with their EPA permit.
The board also approved the purchase of a weatherproof, all-season refrigerated automatic sampler for the waste water treatment plant effluent.
The current system has a 16-year-old sampler which has been replaced several times and is nearing the end of its useful life, per the staff report.
That sampler will come from Hach Corporation in the amount of $5,996.
The final purchase was a crane and utility body for the maintenance of the waste water treatment pumps.
The crane is capable of lifting village owned sewage pumps from their underground vaults, which currently must be serviced by an outside contractor due to the lifting limits of the existing equipment.
The new crane will reduce the villages reliance on outside contractors.
The village will purchase the crane and utility body from Rod Baker Ford, in the amount of $71,865.