Due to the fact that it has no land to build on, the Brown County Regional Sewer District Board will not be in line to receive funding for a wastewater treatment plant this year.

Even if the Brown County Parks and Recreation board were to reconsider its “no” vote and go ahead and offer the property it owns on State Road 135 North for use as a sewer plant, it would be too late to make it into consideration for this next funding cycle, said sewer board member Clint Studabaker.

The sewer board is still working on getting another property on which to build the treatment plant, Studabaker told Bean Blossom residents at the August sewer board meeting. The board wasn’t ready to share yet where that could be.

“It’s unfortunate,” Studabaker said about the inability to get into this funding cycle.

When the parks board decided in July to take back its “yes” vote to offer property at 4687 State Road 135 North to the sewer board, the sewer board stopped working on getting its funding application materials together and redirected its focus to other tasks, Studabaker said.

The sewer board is planning to use a mix of grants and loans to pay for the approximately $7.3 million sewer project. Grant money would not have to be paid back; loan money would.

Sewer users would pay a monthly fee; the target rate is to keep it around $65, but the amount won’t be certain until the funding is approved.

The plant is envisioned to provide sewer to about 260 Bean Blossom-area residents.

Engineer Gary Ladd, who’s been working on the Bean Blossom sewer project for at least 16 years, said the rescinding of the park board’s land offer resulted in “considerable cost” as well as the funding delay. He said it cost “in excess of $10,000” to do layouts of the proposed treatment plant at that site and trying to pursue that property.

This sewer project had been No. 1 on the grant funding priority list for the state, according to the board’s financial adviser, Ladd said. In order to get in line for that money, the board would’ve had to have land locked down, submitted a revised preliminary engineering report and environmental review and completed other steps by Dec. 16, Studabaker said. “We just don’t have time to do that now that we’ve been stopped for a month,” he said.

This delay will push the project back about nine months, Ladd said, meaning that the earliest that water would actually be running in the Bean Blossom plant would be the fall of 2020.

If another treatment plant site is found soon and the stopped work can restart, it’s possible the project could get into the funding cycle after the start of the next fiscal year in July 2020, Ladd said. He does not know where the project will rank in priorities statewide at that time.

The State Revolving Fund only funds the first eight applications on the priority list, and Brown County was third for this end-of-2019 funding cycle. It was fifth in line for the funding cycle in the first quarter of 2020, Ladd said. “We can only hope that when they reset the project priority list, that you’re near the top,” he said.

“Considering that SRF normally has $10 million in grants per year, and distributed $27 million this year, it’s unfortunate the project was not ready, and I feel as though we missed a great opportunity,” Ladd said.

In May, the Brown County Parks and Recreation board voted to sell about 4 acres of land it owns on 135 North at the base of the Bean Blossom hill to the sewer board for $1. But not all board members were present for that vote, and there were some lingering legal questions about what could be done on that land, like whether anything at all could be built on it. In July, the parks and rec board voted 4-0 to go back on the first offer with John Kennard abstaining.

The motion also said that the parks board would revisit the request after members better understood the deed that applies to this land. But Studabaker said even if they decided to vote for it again, it would still be too late for the project to make the next grant cycle.

“We can always be optimistic that that further investigation means they’ll come back with some other idea. But that’s for them; I don’t know what that answer is,” Studabaker said.

The parks board is scheduled to meet again on Wednesday, Aug. 28.

Ladd told the audience at the August BCRSD meeting that he disagreed with a comment that park board President Jim Hahn had made in a July 31 Brown County Democrat story, that the letter the park board received was “non-friendly” and mentioned taking park land for the sewer board’s use.

Ladd said that the language used in the letter was required to be used if the BCRSD applies for a specific grant for this project through the Uniform Relocation Act of 1970. That act was mentioned in the letter and a brochure was included. He read the letter in its entirety to the audience. “I do not feel it is unfriendly,” Ladd said.

Could plans evolve?

In the meantime, the Brown County Regional Sewer District has won a $30,000 grant to study what options might exist to partner with the Helmsburg Regional Sewer District.

Both boards applied for the grant jointly. The Indiana Finance Authority hired Ethel Morgan of HomeTown Engineering in Indianapolis to do the study. She spoke to the BCRSD and the Helmsburg sewer district boards at their August meetings.

Among the details Morgan will be studying are the “projected 20-year population growth and future wastewater needs for both RSDs, including unsewered areas within and/or adjacent to the RSDs’ service areas, including the Bean Blossom Creek Watershed and Lake Lemon.”

She’ll also look into the physical capability of the Helmsburg plant; the organizational status and capabilities of each sewer district; environmental impacts of the various options; and cost estimates.

Her final report will not contain a recommendation; it will just lay out all the facts, she told both boards. She estimated that report will be done by the end of the year. It will be presented in a public meeting.

The BCRSD is still in the running for a major grant from the Regional Opportunities Initiative which would fund a comprehensive study of where it would make sense for sewer to be provided in Brown County.

Financial check-in

Brown County government gave the Brown County Regional Sewer Board $270,000 in June 2018 to get the sewer project started while it waited for project funding to be approved. At that time, the board had 85 cents in its account.

As of the Aug. 13 sewer board meeting, the BCRSD had $113,753.53 of that county money remaining, meaning it has spent about 42 percent of it. The board approved paying more than $22,000 to Ladd Engineering just in the August meeting, most of it for “easement preparations.”

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The Brown County Parks and Recreation board’s recent decisions — including its vote to take back the offer of land for a sewer plant — was mentioned during budget hearings before the Brown County Council last week.

Parks and rec was asking for a budget that was $52,276.65 over what it had last year. That included 3-percent raises for staff, $10,000 to remodel the bathrooms and a maintenance shed; and $9,000 for mowing equipment.

The council didn’t approve many of those requests. Council members agreed to fund a portion of a maintenance supervisor’s pay and the $7,500 requested for legal services, but everything else will likely be cut, including $500 that was requested for skate park maintenance.

“You’ll not get me to vote for this budget, raising $50,000, the budget where it’s at,” said county council Vice President David Critser. “We’ve had too many problems with the park board — not with (Director) Mark (Shields), but with the park board.

“We’ve got citizens up north that really need a sewer, and everyone knows that. Anybody that don’t has got their head in the sand,” Critser said. “… All of my life I’ve heard in Brown County septic systems don’t work and if they do, it’s a short time. But we have thousands of homes out there with septic systems; somewhere at some time those are going to fail. At that time if a house is worth $50,000, $60,000, who will spend $20,000? That house will be vacated, that house will be torn down and the rest of you people will pay the taxes on it.

“… What’s really going to raise your taxes is a lack of sewer system up there,” Critser continued. “It will raise everybody’s taxes and your (Shields’) board backed out of a deal, which I wasn’t happy with. Nobody was happy with the tree deal, so …” he trailed off.

“The tree deal” referred to the logging of parks and rec-owned land on State Road 135 North earlier this year.

The parks and rec board is appointed by various agencies, including the county council, county commissioners, the Brown County Purdue Extension agency and the Brown Circuit Court judge.

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