Edgar urged to start planning for water plant

By Kevin O’Brien

With work wrapping up on Edgar’s $12.7 million sewer plant upgrade, village officials are starting to talk about the need for a multimillion dollar water treatment plant.

“It’s coming,” said trustee Jon Streit at Monday’s Water and Sewer Committee meeting. “Whether we want it to or not, it’s coming.”

Streit predicted that a water plant will need to be built in the next five to eight years and “strongly advised” village officials to start planning as soon as possible for a major project.

The topic came up during a conversation about the results of recent water quality testing at a home in the Edgewood Avenue subdivision. Homeowners in that area have noticed sediment showing up in their selfinstalled filtration systems Water utility operator Bill Tess said water

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samples from a resident’s faucet only showed an issue with manganese, a naturally occurring mineral that can cause water to become discolored and cause possible health effects at high levels over long periods of time.

In a related matter, the board approved a nearly $20,000 contract with Municipal Well & Pump to rehab the village’s Well #10, which has been clogged with a build-up of caustic soda (sodium hydroxide), a chemical used to treat water.

“It’s a six-inch pipe and it builds up to where it’s probably only the size of a fifty-cent piece,” Tess said.

Tess said the buildup decreases the amount of water that can be pumped out of the well and puts additional stress on the well pumps. He believes it’s also causing problems with sand and sediment showing up in the village’s newer homes.

The village considered multiple options for clearing the caustic buildup, such as an acid bath or “pegging” it with a tube, but there are too many elbows in the pipes to make those options feasible, Tess said. The proposal from Municipal Well & Pump calls for replacing 37 feet of pipe instead.

Gary Strand, an engineer with Cooper Engineering, told the board that the village may want to look at how it’s doing its chemical water treatment and consider switching chemicals to prevent further buildup in the the future.

To help determine the cause of the buildups, Tess said additional tests will be done to compare the raw water coming out of the well to the treated water after chemicals have been added.

Strand also said a lot of additional work needs to be done on the Well #10 wellhouse, which he predicted will be “costly.”

Residents can already expect to pay more for sewer services in the near future.

Village administrator Jennifer Lopez said that a sewer rate increase will be presented to the board at its February meeting. The rate hikes are needed so that the utility can pay back $10.1 million in loans to the USDA, which is financing the sewer plant upgrade.

Lopez said the goal is to close on the USDA loans next month and to have the project fully completed by the middle of the year. Strand told trustees that a team of electricians is currently working to install all of the necessary control panels at the new facility.

Other business

■ New police chief Zachary Zaug attended his first board meeting on Monday, and told trustees that he had already started issuing parking tickets and stood by for a property exchange since starting on Jan. 1

■ At the village’s annual caucus before Monday’s meeting, village president Terry Lepak and trustees Patty Schroeder-Schuett, Jon Streit and Randy Werner were all nominated for new terms. Barring any write-in candidates, all four will run unopposed on April 1.

■ The board approved an addendum to the village’s contract with Cooper Engineering, adding an additional $87,494 to account for increasing wages and other costs at the company. Lopez said this addendum was originally presented to the board in February of 2023 after Cooper had gone beyond the original timeline of work on the village’s wastewater treatment plant. The original contract was signed back in 2020 and included provisions for increasing hourly rates in the event the project went longer than expected.

“I think it would be a hard argument for the village to argue that this project didn’t go longer than an average project, mainly because of the COVID time period and all of the federal hangups that we had,” she said.

■ The board approved a loan resolution with the USDA and a grant agreement, which were needed to close out the sewer plant project later this year.

■ The board voted not to make any changes to a village ordinance spelling out the cost share between the village and residents for replacing damaged sections of curb. Residents are currently charged for 80 percent of the repairs, with the village picking up the remaining 20 percent. A proposed amendment would have made the village 100 percent responsible for fixing any damage with an “unknown” cause.

Streit questioned how the village could determine if the cause of any damage is truly “unknown,” since residents are unlikely to admit to doing it themselves.

“I don’t think we should change a single thing, because you’re opening up a can of worms,” he said. The rest of the board agreed.

■ The board voted to decline an offer from AT& T to change the payment amount for leasing village- owned property at 725 N. Second Ave. for a cell tower. Lopez said AT& T tried to entice the village with a lump sum offer of $85,000, but in the long term, she said it does not financially benefit the village at all. Village president Terry Lepak noted that the offer, if accepted, would lower the company’s monthly payments by 25 percent.

“Has anyone’s AT& T bill ever went down?” he asked. “So, I don’t know what they’re expecting from us.”

■ Edgar native Gordon Kroll updated the board on his multifaceted plans for restoring the Scotch Creek watershed, which runs through the center of the village. Kroll said the village should know by next month if it qualified for a grant through the North American Wetlands Conservation Act. It is also waiting to hear if it will receive a Surface Water Planning Grant from the Wisconsin DNR. Corporate grant applications have also been submitted.

Kroll also discussed plans for land near the creek, including the planting of 5,000 wild strawberry seedlings, possible cherry trees on land owned by Riverside Co-op, the installation of a boardwalk with solar pavers, and the addition of a robotically controlled beehive.