Public water and wastewater utilities are victims of their own success.
Here in Kansas, if you’re connected to public water and sewer, you rarely have to wonder whether the water will be there and be safe to drink when you turn on the tap. You rarely have to wonder whether the sewer system will do its job.
They are dependable to the point of being almost invisible in daily life. As long as they work the way they are supposed to, that is. If you turn on the tap and the water comes out discolored or not at all, you notice pretty quickly. If the sewer backs up, noticing becomes practically unavoidable before long.
That reliability didn’t come about by accident. Cities invested heavily into water and wastewater systems, both treatment plants and miles and miles of pipes. And the people who work in those utilities understand the importance of reliability. When a power outage hits Hutchinson, the Utilities Department mobilizes workers right away to take generators to whichever of the city’s 33 lift stations are affected, to keep the sewers functioning. We salute those heroes.
If we stop and really break down what water and sewer utilities do, they are astounding.
A water utility will deliver exactly the amount of water you need directly to your kitchen, bathroom, or laundry room, on demand, immediately, any time, day or night. And a sewer utility will take your sewage away any time you need. And they will do that for less than a penny a gallon. Hutchinson’s combined water and sewer rate works out to about 0.9 cents per gallon, delivering the water for about 0.5 cents and taking away the wastewater for about 0.4 cents per gallon.
Beat that, Uber Eats.
As we write this, city staff members are preparing to ask Hutchinson City Council to borrow about $20 million to update, rehabilitate, and improve the safety of the wastewater treatment facility and sewer lines. They project the sewer rate would need to be increased by 0.1 to 0.2 cents per gallon to pay off the 20-year loan. And they expect rates to be on the Oct. 21 City Council agenda.
We don’t know what the best plan is for the wastewater treatment plant. To be sure, $20 million is a lot of money. But the treatment plant uses a lot of highly specialized heavy machinery to handle an average of 4 million gallons of sewage a day. And deferred maintenance isn’t cheap.
The grit removal system at the treatment plant pulls 7 tons of sand and gravel out of sewage in a typical month. That system being offline for two years meant 168 tons of grit made its way further into the plant, wearing down equipment. So the city is playing a bit of catch-up, in addition to the normal maintenance, repairs, and updates a 67-year-old facility naturally needs.
That price tag is a mere fraction of the cost to build an entire new treatment plant, which officials recognize as cost-prohibitive. But the existing plant will surely need other major investments during the 20-year term of the proposed loan.
According to information from the city and from the Kansas Department of Commerce, Hutchinson’s sewer rate is currently below the state average by about $11 per month per 500 cubic feet of water used. So there may be some room to raise wastewater rates, but pennies turn into dollars, and there are already people feeling the pain of rising costs.
City Engineer Evan Patterson called water and wastewater management “the story of civilization,” making healthy cities possible. Functional water and sewer systems certainly make a place feel more civilized. We shouldn’t take them for granted.
The wastewater treatment plant needs serious work. And after that work is done, the city needs to keep a proactive approach to maintenance of critical utilities infrastructure.
-The Hutchinson Tribune Editorial Board