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Willard officials hear warning that a single food processor could strain sewer plant's biological capacity
Summary
Willard City staff told council that while the shared sewer plant can hydraulically handle more flow, a prospective food-processing customer could exceed the plant's biological oxygen-demand (BOD) capacity, requiring pretreatment, surcharges or a plant expansion to avoid limiting other growth.
Willard City Council discussed wastewater-plant limitations Jan. 8 after staff and the plant engineer described a potential scenario in which a major food-processing customer could overwhelm the facility’s treatment biology even though hydraulic flow could be handled.
Sewer-plant staff told the council an engineering firm representing a prospective food-processing company had provided daily wastewater volumes and constituent parameters. The engineer said the plant could handle the hydraulics but not the dissolved biological oxygen demand (BOD) without either pretreatment by the customer or upgrades to the plant.
"Hydraulically, we could handle it," the sewer plant engineer said in council discussion, "but because of the constituents that make up the nutrient loading... the BOD is the limit for operation." The engineer provided facility figures for context: Phase 1 hydraulic capacity is about 2,000,000 gallons per day, and the plant presently treats about 700,000 gallons per day; the current operational constraint is biological oxygen demand because the plant operates only part of Phase 1 and lacks the microorganism concentration needed to process a high-BOD discharge.
Council members raised equity and metric questions: Willard currently pays a share of the shared plant and wants to ensure that any new industrial discharger does not consume treatment capacity that would otherwise support Willard residential or small-business growth. Members asked staff to pursue additional flow and constituent metering so Willard’s share of nutrient loading can be measured rather than allocated purely on ownership percentage.
Staff said options include requiring pretreatment at the industrial source, negotiating a surcharge to cover extra treatment costs, or investing in plant upgrades; each approach has trade-offs in capital cost and long-term capacity. The plant’s permit does not currently require removal of phosphorus or advanced chemical treatment, but permit limits tighten each cycle and the state’s next permit review could impose stricter effluent limits.
What’s next: Council asked sewer-board representatives to explore additional testing and metering, present options for industrial pretreatment or surcharge structures, and report back at a future board meeting. No formal action on capacity expansion was taken Jan. 8.
