LYONS, Kan. — Plans for the renovation of Lyons’s Wastewater Treatment Plant were presented to the Lyons City Council at their February 17th meeting. Council members were presented the 46-sheet set of documents that outline the electrical, structural and control components along with a hydraulic profile that outlines how water moves through the plant and how it eventually leaves.
Thaniel Monaco from BG Consultants said among the changes being made to the process including placing a new manhole to replace an existing one north of the old headworks structure. Where screening and grit removal takes place. This ultimately will go to a wet well and then be pumped into the aeration system and then to the final clarifiers.
One change being made from what is done now is to start pulling sludge from the aeration system directly. With this, WWTP staff will be able to have more precision in their control of wasting the activated sludge that will be routed through existing infrastructure and then into the digester along with enhancing treatment capacities for the regulatory aspects of the plant.
Monaco said they are currently looking at a March 15th submission of the plans, which will probably take a couple of months to work through regulatory review and make any modifications that might be needed. On this time frame, plan approval could come in mid-May, after which they would advertise for bids that would probably be back to the Council for their approval in July., with actual construction to start a month later.
Related to this project, an updated agreement for a grant on the project is currently being drafted. Since the grant award from the Kansas Department of Commerce was awarded, the city has been working on an environmental review of the project. The city is not able to incur any cost toward the project until that review has been completed, including work covered through a KDHE loan that’s covering most of the project cost. This also involves working through two different sets of time frames and regulations which Interim City Administrator Bailey Sayler said can be tricky.
