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City engineers outline $131M Catfish Creek sanitary upgrades, Old Mill lift station under construction
Summary
Engineering staff presented a multiyear schedule of sanitary sewer and stormwater projects, including an underway Old Mill lift station and planned Catfish Creek interceptor upsizes aimed at alleviating wet-weather capacity constraints and supporting future development.
DUBUQUE, Iowa — City engineers described a multi-year capital program Thursday that includes an ongoing Old Mill Road lift-station replacement, planned Catfish Creek interceptor upsizes and other sanitary and stormwater investments intended to reduce infiltration and support growth in the city’s southern service areas.
Why it matters: Engineering staff told the City Council the work is needed to reduce wet‑weather overflows, improve system resiliency and create capacity for future development. The city has combined technical modeling, flow-meter data and capital planning to sequence projects so that improvements come online before new development increases peak loads in the same parts of the system.
Gus Ahoye, city engineer, and Max O’Brien, environmental engineer, said the city’s sanitary system includes roughly 300 miles of gravity main and about 22 lift stations, with approximately 20% of gravity mains older than 100 years. An asset-management effort underway established a hydraulic model, deployed new flow meters and produced risk-based prioritization for repairs and upsizes.
Old Mill lift station and short-term measures: The Old Mill lift station replacement is under construction and will deliver substantially increased pumping capacity when complete; the station includes multiple large pumps and onsite backup generation. Construction started in early 2025 and the contractor expects substantial completion by mid‑2027, with an EDA grant and other federal/state funding comprising a major portion of the project’s financing. City staff and consultants modeled scenarios to estimate how much additional capacity would be available when the new station enters service.
Catfish Creek interceptor program: Staff described planned upsizes in the Catfish Creek system that will add deeper, larger mains to replace 12‑ to 18‑inch lines where those pipes act as bottlenecks. Max O’Brien told the council the planned improvements include roughly four miles of upsized interceptor and associated lift‑station and conveyance work; combined program costs for the Catfish Creek-related sanitary work and associated stormwater investments were presented in the meeting as roughly $131 million over the coming five years.
Staff emphasized phased, data-driven sequencing: engineers said they have used new flow data to distinguish wet‑weather inflow and infiltration from other causes of high flow; the model helped identify the Middle Fork and South Fork reaches as high‑priority areas where flow rates and transient loads exceed existing conveyance capacity. The city has submitted SRF planning/design loan applications for individual interceptor phases and anticipates those funds to appear on the state’s intended use plan in mid‑2025.
Other system work and funding: Engineers listed multiple related sanitary projects — replacements, CCTV inspections, manhole and pipe repairs — and noted that CCTV-driven repair work uncovered roughly $350,000 of defects per year that are cost‑effective to repair proactively rather than as emergencies. Granger Creek lift‑station upgrades, Schmidt Island sanitary repairs and stormwater basin and pump improvements were also described.
Council members praised the department’s planning approach and asked for more details; City Manager Mike Van Milligen told the council the city has already met with the Iowa DNR on connection policy in the affected sewersheds and is working with developers, existing large users and federal and state grant programs to sequence capacity additions and minimize impacts.
Engineer Gus Ahoye summarized the program by comparing the project to other transformational infrastructure efforts in Dubuque’s history and said the combined improvements will be crucial to the city’s long‑term growth and resiliency. The meeting transcript records no final funding decisions on the Catfish Creek work on Thursday; staff said SRF and grant-funded steps are imminent and that additional council actions will follow as individual projects reach procurement or contracting stages.
