The idea is to raise the average residential wastewater bill from the current $34.49 per month to $41.18 by 2027. With the funds, the city can renovate the municipal wastewater treatment plant, adding new piping, a new generator and other safety improvements. Eventually, the city wants to modify the plant’s four bioreactors to handle increasingly stronger wastewater.
Rate hikes would help fund Grand Forks wastewater plan
As the city grows and officials hope to lure more businesses to town, Grand Forks administrators want to beef up the wastewater treatment plant northwest of town. They aim to pay for at least some of that with compounding utility rate increases. 7:00 am, May 8, 2021 ×
Grand Forks City Hall, 255 N. 4th St. Sam Easter / Grand Forks Herald
Grand Forks administrators want to hike utility rates to pay for improvements to the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
Public works staff want about $13.7 million by the end of 2024 to pay for new piping, safety improvements, a new generator and getting the plant up to city code. They also seek another $31.3 million by 2027 to modify each of the plant’s four bioreactors to handle more wastewater in general as the city grows, along with the volume of relatively dirty waste that’s pumped out by Red River Biorefinery, JR Simplot and other large-scale industrial and
New Grand Forks water treatment plant is higher tech, but hopes to stay under the radar
Grand Forks new $150 million water treatment plant generally uses a more modern filtration system than the city s old plant. The new system is more expensive to run, but it s designed to catch emerging contaminants such as the forever chemicals that have caused problems in other cities. The plant itself is ready to expand as the city grows and expands. 7:30 am, Apr. 10, 2021 ×
Grand Forks Water Treatment Plant Superintendent Fred Goetz monitors conductivity in the reverse osmosis skids at the facility March 28, 2021. The building has room for several more banks of those skids to accommodate future city growth. Photo by Eric Hylden/Grand Forks Herald