Tuesday night’s (July 18th) Danville City Council meeting included a presentation from RJN Group out of Downers Grove on their $1.7 million assessment on about 20% of Danville’s storm and sanitary sewer system. The overall picture they presented is that a plan is needed, now, for major updates and repairs. One statistic RJN Group pointed out is that during rainfall, water flow in the storm sewers is supposed to be an average of four times greater than its normal rate. In the places RJN Group inspected, it was an average of 16 times greater.
Using smoke testing, leaks were found in numerous manholes and storm drains. And as Danville City Engineer Sam Cole points out, numerous improper taps were found, some owned by the city itself; such as a sanitary sewer drain into a storm drain, or sometimes even the other way around.
AUDIO: It can actually go both ways. We’ve seen improper connections of people’s sanitary sewers to a storm sewer; often times possible for convenience and, you know, cost savings, seemingly. But that’s putting sewage in our waterways, and things like that.
Marissa Villafuerte, Mike Young, and Yann Gallin of RJN Group explain their partial assessment of Danville’s sanitary and storm sewer situation to the City Council.
And when one gets sewage in their basement, a neighbor may be using a sanitary sewer for something they shouldn’t.
AUDIO: Yard drains and perimeter drains around houses hooked into the sanitary sewer, and that’s adding a lot of storm water. If you can imagine all the rain that’s supposed to go out on the ground and into the storm sewer system trying to go down an eight inch sanitary sewer, it doesn’t take many houses before that’s a big problem for your neighbors.
Cole estimates that the city needs a plan of about $38 million of work over five years, which would include five different phases. He says financing it with available loans, such as from the EPA, is the best bet; because relying on just cash flow can be very dangerous.
AUDIO: Right now we’ve got a little over $2 million dollars per year allocated for storm water improvements. So we’re going to have to find a way, through a loan and hopefully some principal forgiveness, to paying this off over 20 or 30 years.
Danville’s City Engineer Sam Cole and Mayor Rickey Williams, Jr reflect upon the need for a mayor sewer plan.
For Mayor Rickey Williams, Jr; this major project is something that needs to be done now. And giving it the proper repairs is a much better option than doing nothing; and then perhaps having to pay, as RJN Group projected, a possible five times as much to replace the whole system from the start.
AUDIO: I am hoping that we can continue to assess and map at least as much as we did last year; so that hopefully within the next few years we can have a full plan. But we will have a longer term plan, I would say hopefully within the next year and a half.
The mayor says he’s hoping that Sam Cole and the Engineering Department have a Phase One proposal before the City Council within the next month or two.
