News Second opinion: Vinton\'s 2nd sewer estimate is $26 million lower than 1st

In the spring of 2014, the Vinton City Council hired the McClure Engineering Company to study the city’s sewer system and outline necessary improvements.

A week later, the city hired as its city manager a guy who played a role in building an award-winning sewer system with a unique and cost-effective system – the first of its kind in Iowa.

Now that city leaders have spent a couple of weeks discussing the $31 million estimate from McClure Engineering, Chris Ward says that maybe if they had hired him first, Vinton officials could have avoided some of the stress of the past two weeks.

In his previous job, Ward was the city manager at West Liberty. Although it’s smaller than Vinton, West Liberty has a huge turkey meat production facility that produces more solid waste on an average day than all of the households in the town combined.

Yet, West Liberty has an award-winning sewer system and the first-of-its-kind-in-Iowa solid waste management system.

During Thursday’s city council meeting, Ward introduced an engineer who helped design West Liberty’s system to Vinton’s leaders  – who then left the meeting with much more affordable estimates.

“I called in some favors,” said Ward on Friday morning. "I know we needed a second opinion."

He contacted Bob Veenstra, who helped began the Veenstr & Kimm  engineering consulting firm more than 50 years ago.

Veenstra & Kimm had done a variety of engineering work for West Liberty while Ward was the city manager there. They also played a role in designing the city sewer system’s upgrade to accommodate the waste flow from the turkey plant.

During Thursday’s meeting, Veenstra told city leaders that he believed Vinton could upgrade its sewer system to meet new state and federal environmental rules and also eliminate its inflow problems at a cost of around $4.5 million over the next 20 years – less than 1/6th of the first estimate.

Veenstra will meet again with city leaders at the next meeting.

One of the options the council is likely to hear is something that among Iowa towns, has only been done in West Liberty: The Geotube.

The Geotube dewatering container is a giant (one million gallon) device that looks somewhat like a very large waterbed liner. It’s placed at sewage treatment facilities, where waste pumped into the bags, which allow liquid to seep out and into lagoons for treatment. What’s left after the water has drained out is a solid waste product that farmers can drill into their soil.

In a world where most items have a price tag in the millions, Ward said West Liberty was able to get a one million gallon Geotube for just $8,000.

Ward said the Geotubes have been approved by the DNR, although the technology is so new that the small town of West Liberty is the only one in Iowa to use it.

Ward said he expected representatives from McClure Engineering as well as Veemstra to discuss their findings and possible solutions to the city’s sewer challenges during the Feb. 26 council meeting.

The city and the DNR have begun discussions on the things the Vinton plant must upgrade to be in compliance with federal regulations. An e-c oli testing and removal system, as well as copper and agricultural nutrients (phosphorus and nitrates) are among the things that must be removed before treated water can be released from the plant.      

See a story about the West Liberty system HERE.