Plans to connect Brown County State Park with Town of Nashville water and sewer services have passed the public hearing stage and are going under consideration for funding.

The town and state park leaders have been talking since last spring about making the park a town water and sewer customer.

The town council has been talking since at least the fall of 2019 about how to fix ongoing environmental problems with its 61-year-old wastewater treatment system and has been working through improvement mandates from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

At a May 27 public hearing, the town council unanimously approved preliminary engineering reports (PERs) and signatory resolutions for all three projects. At least two are anticipated to run roughly on the same schedule with construction starting in April 2022.

Approving the PERs does not mean that the town is obligated to any specific spending or customer rates yet, said Lori Young, an engineer from Curry & Associates who’s been working on the state park connection project. Approval of the PERs was needed to move the projects to the funding consideration stage with the State Revolving Fund and Indiana Finance Authority so that the agencies can evaluate and prioritize applications.

“I think it’s a good time to be hopeful for grant funds, because we’re kind of seeing the most prevalent grant funding I’ve seen in my career,” Young said. “It’s a very, very good opportunity.”

The town and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, which runs Brown County State Park, plan to use a combination of grants and loans to fund the work.

How the projects may affect current town sewer customers’ bills is not yet known, as the town does not know how much grant funding and how much loan funding it will get.

Work to be done

The state park water connection project will not cost the town anything, Young said. The DNR will be responsible for it, estimated at $2,814,750 including all non-construction costs. That will include putting in a bigger water main that will run from the park’s property and down Parkview Road to a connection point at State Road 46 East, as well as a water storage tank.

The state park sewer connection project is estimated to cost $3,369,220, all in. The town will not incur debt for the costs related to the park’s hookup, though, including engineering and a new force main from near the state park’s north entrance to Salt Creek Plaza. The town will own that main, but the park, with financing from the IFA, will pay for it, according to a presentation given during the meeting.

The other work to the town’s wastewater treatment system is estimated at $6,650,000 including non-construction costs.

Within the collection system, that includes rehabilitating leaky pipes; taking out the lift station behind the Brown County Inn and putting a new one in the Salt Creek Plaza area; installing a larger force main from that new lift station to the treatment plant; and raising parts of the lift station at Parkview above flood levels so they can be more easily accessed.

At the treatment plant, the project includes putting in new aerobic digester tanks, a new sludge dewatering building and equipment, and a new chemical storage building. These are parts of the plant that were not raised or updated the last time the town funded some work at the site in 2010. About 35 percent of the plant, including these buildings, is still in the floodplain, which can lead to environmental contamination when Salt Creek floods.

IDEM issued mandates for the town to fix those problems nearly two years ago. Combining that project with the state park’s connections is a way to possibly get multiple projects done at a better rate, said Roger Kelso, the town’s utility board president and a former superintendent of the utilities.

Will rates rise?

Without knowing what combination of grants and loans the funding agencies are willing to give yet, it’s difficult to say what the effect will be on current customers of Nashville sewer, said Jarrod Hall with Krohn & Associates.

The IFA likes to keep rates no higher than $65 per month and Nashville sewer customers are currently at about $60 per month, Hall said. So, best case, bills for the average 4,000-gallon user could rise by $5 a month.

Without receiving any grant funding, rates would need to go up by nearly 40 percent, making bills about $83 a month. But Hall and Young said that’s unlikely because of the abundance of grant funding currently available for wastewater and water projects — more than any of the professionals in the room had seen in decades.

The town council will not have to commit to the work without knowing what the impact on rate payers would be first, Hall said.

The engineers in the room pointed out that connecting the park with town water and sewer will be a long-term net financial benefit for the town’s utilities as well as Brown County Water Utility, which actually supplies the water that the town resells and distributes to its customers.

The arrangements also will benefit the state park because its staff will not have to produce water from Ogle Lake anymore to supply the entire park. The park also won’t have to keep using its current wastewater treatment plant, which is taking care of the 30 percent or so of the sewage that isn’t already going to Nashville’s plant.

The town will be performing a cost-of-service study to make sure that the user rates are fair to all parties, Young said.