Colfax council approves SCADA upgrade and accepts state remediation in lieu of $36,000 fine for wastewater plant

Colfax City Council on Aug. 13 approved an expanded contract to upgrade the wastewater treatment plant's supervisory control and data acquisition system, and authorized a stipulated order with the State Water Resources Control Board to remediate prior violations instead of paying a $36,000 administrative fine.

Chief plant operator Matt Anderson told the council the plant currently has only “the alarms that we have for the plant are just effluent alarms,” and no pump, blower or other instrumentation alarms. Anderson said the proposed Control Point contract amendment will provide alarms for pumps, blowers and new instrumentation — including influent pH and ammonia meters — and that the upgrade will reduce overtime, decrease regulatory penalties and improve chemical and power usage. He said Control Point's work is estimated at about $163,000 after removing components previously planned under a different contractor.

The council also approved a stipulated settlement offered by the state water board that would allow the city to spend roughly $36,000 on plant instrumentation and remediation rather than paying the fine into state coffers. Anderson said the negotiated remediation approach is designed to “remediate the issue forcefully, in lieu of the fine,” and to prevent future violations.

City staff and other speakers told the council the SCADA project will be funded from this year's sewer budget with any overage drawn from sewer reserves after accounting for expected chemical and power savings. Council members asked about tradeoffs in staff time and costs; Anderson said crew members currently put in about 10 extra hours a week monitoring the plant because alarms are insufficient and that the SCADA system will produce operational savings and reduce mandatory penalties.

Council made motions to approve both items; both motions were seconded and approved by voice vote. The council did not record a roll-call tally in the meeting transcript.

Why it matters: the SCADA upgrade and the settlement agreement address repeated regulatory violations at the plant and aim to reduce future operational risks, regulatory penalties and staff overtime while improving system monitoring and automation. The funding approach keeps the project within the sewer enterprise budget but may draw on reserves if savings projections fall short.

The city manager and plant operations staff said they will continue implementing upgrades and expect the improved monitoring to lower the plant's exposure to off-hours violations. No implementation timeline was specified in the public discussion.