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Saginaw outlines major water and wastewater projects; tank comes online and lead line replacements continue
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Summary
Director Mike Greiner told council the city’s century-old treatment plant will remain in service with major upgrades including a recently filled elevated storage tank, piping and pump-station projects, and lead-service-line replacements financed in part through DWSRF funds.
Mike Greiner, Saginaw’s director of water and wastewater treatment services, presented a multi-part update on the city’s water system and wastewater assets and answered council questions about financing and operations.
Greiner said Saginaw’s water treatment plant is a 52-million-gallon-a-day facility that averages about 17 million gallons daily; the wastewater plant is a roughly 32-million-gallon-a-day facility. He reported that an elevated storage tank was filled and disinfected this week and is expected to be placed into service on Wednesday, improving resilience and extending the time operators have before a boil-water condition could be required during power outages.
Greiner reviewed several capital projects: a piping project on Washington (underway; work to finish in June), gratiot pump station improvements funded by the state to support local factories, switch-gear and generator replacements, UV disinfection conversion at the wastewater plant to replace chlorine gas, clarifier repairs and large-valve replacements, and roofing and electrical upgrades across plant structures. He noted the projects rely in part on DWSRF/Clean Water SRF funding and described the state's forgiveness scoring process: some packages have achieved substantial forgiveness (Greiner said an earlier drinking-water package had 40% forgiveness as an example).
On lead service-line replacement, Greiner described a multi-year inventory and replacement program that began after state rules were enacted; staff estimated several thousand lines have been replaced to date with dedicated crews and DWRF funding supporting work. Greiner said the city's studies suggest staying at the existing plant site is substantially less expensive than building a new plant—he gave an order-of-magnitude study range (hundreds of millions to rebuild vs about $150 million cheaper to rehabilitate the existing site).
Council members asked about wholesale raw-water relationships; Greiner clarified Saginaw and Midland jointly own the Saginaw–Midland Municipal Water Corporation and that Bay City is a large wholesale customer. He promised to provide comparative per-gallon rate tables to council members.
Why it matters: The projects described affect system reliability, public-health compliance (lead-line work), and long-term capital outlays. Many of the projects rely on state SRF financing, whose forgiveness terms affect the city's borrowing choices.
Next steps: Staff will finalize sampling for a mixing-zone demonstration study required by permits, complete piping and tank commissioning work, and return to council with financing options and more detailed schedules.
