Terrace Hill Sanitary District Votes for Lagoon Upgrade

Terrace Hill Sanitary District Votes for Lagoon Upgrade

Matt Grohe, Hampton Chronicle

P1 Approximately 35 members of the Terrace Hill Sanitary District met at the Hampton Country Club Friday to discuss wastewater treatment options in advance of the revocation of the district’s certification. 

P2  The Terrace Hill Sanitation District Committee led by Toni Dean, second from left, presented residents two options for wastewater treatment and a Friday Sept 1st meeting at Hampton Country Club.

P3 This single lagoon northeast of the Hampton Country Club will be joined by two others engineered to bring the district into EPA compliance. 

P4 Graphic.

In a meeting at the Hampton Country Club Friday night, the trustees and membership of the Terrace Hill Sanitation Club agreed to proceed with an upgrade of their wastewater treatment system, instead of connecting to the city of Hampton. The district includes business and residents in Terrace Hill, the area north and east of Highway 65 and 170th, which has 63 hookups total, one for each building served.

A decision on whether or not to upgrade the existing private sewer system or connect to the City of Hampton via a pump station and forcemain was required by the district by no later than the end of the month in order to meet EPA requirements being enforced by the Iowa Department of Natural resources. Visitors at the meeting were presented with two cost scenarios to consider which were prepared by a committee of residents.

The Hampton option involved a smaller capital outlay, but added ongoing costs pushed the monthly total higher than the upgrade option, with the monthly cost for the lagoon upgrade coming in at appx. $226.39 a month, vs $262.92 for the Hampton connection for future water bills. Both numbers are based on a 30-year amortization.

The district's problems date back to 1971 when it was created, and later issued permit # 1971 285 Dec 8th, 1971, to operate a wastewater treatment project near Otter Creek in a floodplain, with one cell of waste stabilization. The cell consists of a lagoon on the northeast corner of the golf course just off the 6th hole.

The district also had a separate Wastewater Treatment Operating Permit issued at the same time, which renewed every five years, and expired Sep 30th 2021. According to Trustee Toni Dean, who with husband Thomas owns a home at 1631 Club View Dr., due to high levels of ammonia in the lagoon which fail EPA standards, the DNR requested an upgrade to the system and would not renew the certification. The District had two years to come up with a plan or face shutdown, and that deadline was looming. According to records online the district has failed at least five water quality tests.

Toni and Thomas are both engineers and California transplants, coming from the San Diego area, and neither golf. Toni is the President of the Terrace Hill board of directors and has led the effort to get the bids and create the project budget for the district, which had approached the city with questions about connecting last year that were considered at the Sept 19th, 2022 Hampton City Council workshop. Also on the board are Secretary Duane Carstens and Treasurer Dean Whitmore.

Toni said the district had been exploring options since hiring an engineering service to go over options in 2019. At that time the options were to build an onsite treatment plant, or connect to Hampton. Cost evaluations at that time ruled out the onsite plant, so a third option, the lagoon option, was explored. Toni said technically the district is a trust which only required a trustees decision, but the vote was held as a courtesy and in consideration of the scope of the project.

The lagoon option was not initially considered because the assumption was that the district did not have enough property to build the size of lagoons needed. However, now the district has secured verbal agreement from an adjoining landowner to sell two acres of farmland so the district can have a more affordable option. A signed purchase agreement with the landowner who was not named was awaiting a decision by the District, and now a survey to create a new legal description.

The new system would add two lagoons to the existing single lagoon and cycle effluent from lagoon to lagoon to dissipate ammonia concentrations.

With the decision reached Friday, Toni said now the district will contact the engineering firm, McClure Engineering of Fort Dodge, and get the ball rolling. Dean also said that with Friday’s decision the DNR and the EPA will not proceed with penalties but will allow the district a waiver to operate as the project is completed as long as the district stays on track with a timeline that the engineering firm will build and present.

Another component will be the financing, and the committee will be pursuing grants or low interest funds to finance the project. State Revolving Loan Funds, which the city is utilizing for its water treatment plant upgrade are not an option Dean said due to aging of their five-year grant and the number of applicants currently.

Board member Dean Whitmore said that while 30 years is a long time and guessed that the current board would be long gone, but the project will be paid for, and the residents and businesses will just be paying maintenance fees with the costs dropping significantly.

Dean said she was “pleasantly surprised” by both the fact that the lagoon option ended up being the more appealing of the two with the membership, and that the landowner was willing to work with them to make the project happen.