Indian Harbour Beach officials are livid at a county plan being considered to avoid future sewage discharges by building a new $50 million wastewater treatment plant near homes and a park.
The proposed plant would be located to the west and north of Bella Coola Drive/Timpoochee Drive and south and east of Anchor Drive on the county maintenance facility property, and a portion of the adjoining soccer fields near the Algonquin Sports Complex.
Ironically, if a new plant is built, some of the same areas of Indian Harbour Beach where residents hid inside from the smell of canals filled with raw sewage in 2017 will have a chance for the similar effect of unpleasant odors every day of the year from the plant, depending on wind direction, said City Manager Mark Ryan.
Ryan and Deputy Mayor Nickle, who has a civil engineering background, will send a letter to the county this week explaining the city’s vehement opposition to the plant option and the need to be more involved in the planning process for whatever solution is selected. The idea for a new plant came about after Hurricane Irma as one potential option to avoid the practice of county sewage releases into an Indian Harbour Beach canal when the wastewater system becomes inundated with water. Other options included accelerating a plan to line aging clay pipes and smoke testing for leaks, and perhaps financially helping repair pipes which are the customer’s responsibility.
The new wastewater treatment plan option – which re-emerged in an April 6 utility report to the county commission – would construct a 6 million gallon-per-day plant near the Indian Harbour Beach maintenance facility. The report says the $50 million plant “would be very helpful as a long term solution to sewer issues in the south beaches service area.”
Ryan and the City Council disagree with that logic and would prefer the county to accelerate lining the pipes.
They are most concerned about the county’s apparent lack of recognition of the potential devastating impact of a sewer plant on quality of life caused by being built in close proximity to homes and recreation facilities.
“Our message to them will be that the major culprit of flooding is ‘I and I’ (Intrusion and infiltration of water into sewer lines) which can be addressed by lining the pipes. We say do that first and see how much the flow is reduced and how much capacity has been freed up at the south beaches treatment plant,’’ he said.
But Ryan said the biggest message the county should get from the letter is to take the time to consider the impact of quality of life to residents living near the proposed plant, some of whom have lived there more than 30 years, and to meet with them face to face on the issue.
