The Utilities Committee met 03/07/2023. One of the items they received an update on was the wastewater treatment plant Polymer Incident of 12/26/2022. During that incident 4-5 months’ worth of treatment chemicals were dumped into the wastewater treatment plant’s system which stopped their digesters and the hauled waste program.
I’ve prepared a complete transcript of the discussion for download.
Utilities Director Chris Shaw went through the memo that he submitted to the committee.
He noted that the Appleton wastewater treatment plant was the largest publicly owned treatment works (POTW) north of Milwaukee, and its hauled waste program is double that of Green Bay’s. The Appleton hauled waste program has brought in around $20 million in revenue over the last 10 years so, after the incident, they worked hard to get the program back up and running.
They were successful in getting the digesters working again and did not have any environmental releases to either the stormwater system (which would have gone into the Fox River) or into the sanitary system.
Director Shaw had initially believed that they would not be able to meet the regulatory requirements of the Wisconsin Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit; however, it turned out that the treatment plant did actually stay in compliance and there were no regulatory issues or permit violations as a result of this incident. It sounded like this was due to the amount of lime in from the water treatment plant which killed germs and allowed them to meet the permit requirements even when the digesters were not working.
He reviewed the dollar amounts associated with the incident and specifically talked about the approximately $40,000 in costs associated with salary/wages spent on the incident. He noted that the city was not going to need to find $40,000 at the end of the year to pay those salaries, because they were going to be paid regardless. Rather, the work effort of those employees had been focused on responding to the Polymer Incident rather than being directed toward other things.
There were some real costs involved other including consulting fees, contractor work, parts, and pumps. There was also an insurance claim that was being made for some of the equipment that was damaged as a result of the gas release during the incident.
There was also around $130,000 in estimated lost revenue as well as a reduction of around $46,000 in expenses due to not operating the hauled waste program for a number of days.
He mentioned that they had to work some of their equipment very hard in order to get everything up and running again. Two larger pumps and mixers were run much harder than normal. “To regain the hauled waste program (that was the goal, that was the objective), we had to beat up some of our equipment, and it was worth the loss.” They had to purchase new equipment to replace those parts.
During the revenue report which followed the update on the Polymer Incident, Director Shaw pointed out that in spite of the incident their total revenue for the year was still around $150,000 more in 2022 than in 2021.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1084459&GUID=9DC8B195-0815-43AD-B957-EAB3A92C43B4
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