Water and wastewater CIP: $36.1M for water projects; $53M nutrient‑removal upgrade under way

At the Ames City Council workshop, Parul Balanwal, assistant director for Water and Pollution Control, laid out the department’s five‑year capital needs and ongoing large upgrades at the wastewater plant.

Balanwal said the water production and treatment and water pollution control programs total about $36,083,000 over the next five years. Key water projects include cleaning both ground storage reservoirs at the old plant site, adding variable frequency drives at selected wells, server and SCADA upgrades for improved control and cybersecurity, repainting and maintenance of elevated tanks, and the planned Prairie View Industrial Center 1,000,000‑gallon elevated tank (schedule delayed by about a year to align with development).

For wastewater, Balanwal described a $53,000,000 biological nutrient removal project that will upgrade the Ames Water Pollution Control Facility to meet Iowa Department of Natural Resources nutrient reduction requirements. Phase 1 is under construction and includes new bar screens, grid removal systems, half of the additional aeration basin capacity, and a relocated administration building; staff said the plant’s treatment capacity will increase from 12,100,000 gallons per day to 14,600,000 gallons per day as a result of these upgrades. Staff reported a substantial‑completion target date for the current phase in October 2026.

Balanwal also discussed support projects: clarifier repainting and maintenance, lift station upgrades (including replacing the Northward lift station with gravity sewer in a later year), an emergency generator replacement (current standby dates to 1988), and work to accept diverted food waste to support on‑site cogeneration and the city’s climate action goals. Staff noted some phase‑1 costs ran higher than expected and that watershed funding was reduced to limit sewer‑rate impacts.

Council asked how many days of water the proposed 5,000,000‑gallon ground reservoir would supply. Staff said average day demand is roughly 6.5 MGD, with seasonal peaks around 9.5 MGD and lows near 4 MGD; existing storage and the new reservoir would provide only a few days of supply in a catastrophic outage, requiring rationing plans in such events. On watershed projects, staff said Iowa State modeling is being used to prioritize practices by pounds of nutrient removed per dollar, but verification of modeled benefits is more limited for some practices and would not always be straightforward to measure in the field.

Council did not take a funding vote at the workshop; staff said more detailed schedules, monitoring plans and cost‑impact analyses will be returned to council ahead of formal budget decisions.