Sewer system meeting

All Roland residents should have received a letter in the mail talking about a public meeting the city council is going to have regarding work on our city's sewer system. Much of the system is approaching 90 years old, and needs some work.

We don't have the money right now to do everything we like, so there are a couple different directions we can go. The "directions" have different benefits.

Option 1 would be to upgrade the sewer main that runs from the pool to the sewer plant. It carries the entire sewage of the city. It was built when the city had about 600 people--does fine most of the time--but when we get big rains it backs up--and sometimes backs up into peoples' basements. The flow is up because people run their sump pumps into the sewer system, and because of the old system elsewhere, ground water leaks into our sewer system. A bigger pipe would hopefully handle the load.
Cost of Option 1 would be $600,000 to $1.2 Million. The low end is if we could run along Bear Creek in the backyards of the folks along Samson. The high end is if we cannot obtain a right of way. We would then have to tear up Samson Street, and bring it underneath that street--and having it closed for a couple months, and then install a new street.


Option 2 is to slip line all the sewer lines in town. That is basically not digging up the sewer lines, but putting a coating around the inside of all the sewer pipe. This would hopefully cut down on ground water leaking into the system. Which would then theoretically cut down the amount of water going down our sewer main. It costs about $20,000 per city block, or about $2.5 Million for the whole city. We wouldn't have to do this project all at once--and we wouldn't have to do the newer sections of sewer pipe either.

So we want to have a community meeting to discuss these issues on February 15 at 7PM at the Community Center. We would like to see what the concerns or questions the citizens of Roland have. So save the date, and if you have any questions ahead of time, please forward them to me or to City Hall.