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Sparta Town Council hears $15 million wastewater upgrade plan and tight timeline to spend funds
Summary
Consultants told the Sparta Town Council the town secured a $15,000,000 state grant for wastewater-plant upgrades and recommended building on the existing site; engineers warned the grant must be encumbered quickly, creating an aggressive design, permitting and bidding schedule.
Joel Whitford, a consultant with Gill Associates, told the Sparta Town Council that the town has funding and a recommended plan to modernize its wastewater treatment plant, but that the money carries a short deadline.
Whitford said the town received a $15,000,000 earmark in the state budget to support the project and that "the funding has to be encumbered by the end of June," creating an "aggressive" schedule to finish design and permitting, advertise bids in March and award a contract in May. He said the recommendation is to build on the existing site to limit long-term costs, while acknowledging construction sequencing will temporarily reduce treatment capacity.
The project scope described by Whitford includes installing a mechanical bar screen, replacing the influent pump station with three pumps (two operating, one standby), converting to sequencing batch reactors (SBRs) sized for the plant's 600,000 gallons-per-day capacity, replacing the generator and considering UV disinfection and grit removal if funds allow. Whitford noted the plant currently treats a little less than 300,000 gallons per day and that some steel tanks and other equipment have reached the end of their useful life.
"We're designing this project so that items can be pulled out if needed, because you have a limited amount of money," Whitford said, noting construction costs and contractor availability in the current market. He flagged two siting options—keeping the work on the existing footprint, which requires careful sequencing but is likely more cost-effective, and building off-site, which would ease construction sequencing but raise long-term maintenance and piping costs and may require new discharge permitting.
Town maintenance staff described recent storm-related stress on the system: the sewer plant lost primary power and the plant's generator failed during the outage, forcing staff to run the plant manually for roughly 28 hours. A maintenance official credited crew efforts for avoiding a boil-water notice. The presentation also listed immediate capital items, including pump-station rehab and a generator repair invoice of $5,352.37.
Why it matters: Whitford said the state grant creates a rare opportunity to replace aging infrastructure and reduce future operating costs, but failing to meet the encumbrance deadline would risk losing the earmarked funds. The council heard estimates, tradeoffs and a recommended schedule and will need to act on funding approvals and design timelines in the coming months.
Next steps: Consultants and staff said they will continue design work, pursue required permits and ask the council to authorize the necessary funding and contract actions to meet the state deadline. Whitford and staff urged prompt decisions to keep the timeline on track.
