Iola will hire Professional Engineering Consultants for engineering services related to planned upgrades in the city’s wastewater collection system.
The city will pay PEC up to $28,000 to decide the scope of the work to the nearly century-old, mostly underground system.
Engineers Jim Martin and Alex Darby provided council members with the results of an extensive evaluation of about 100,000 feet of subterranean sewer lines and all 14 of the city’s wastewater pump stations and 820 manholes.
Their findings revealed that five of the pump stations required varying degrees of improvements, while about 35,000 feet of the sewer lines were in need of repairs using cured in place pipe (CIPP). Thirty-eight of the 94 manholes in need of repair have been fixed by city staff.
To illustrate their presentation, Martin and Darby showed video clips recorded by a robotic camera inserted into the sewer lines that revealed several cracks in various mains as well as lines penetrated by tree roots.
The engineers pegged the entire project cost at about $3.8 million.
The CIPP repairs would entail inserting a liner inside existing sewer lines, which would then seal the cracks, cure and harden.
“It would become a pipe within a pipe,” Martin said. “It’s a very long-term investment.”
The liner would handle the same loads as the existing cast iron and clay sewer lines and should last for several decades, he said.
If the city were to act promptly on the the repairs, it is eligible for a $768,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, and an additional $192,000 in a 20-year loan from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the engineers said. The remaining funds would come from the city’s wastewater utility reserves.
Iola City Administrator Carl Slaugh said the work would likely need to be done in phases and spread out over two years for financial reasons.
Time needed to pay for costly upgrades
