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Cheaper
option floated for wells
Chicago Tribune
- 7/30
Joliet
believes it has found a way to rid its water of radium for about
two-thirds of what a plan to build 15 miles of pipes and a filtration
plant to draw water from the Kankakee River would have cost.
The
City Council on Tuesday will consider a recommendation to retain
the well-water system but remove the excessive radium by means
of a chemical filter on each well. The price tag is about $96
million.
The other proposed solution, which officials had been considering
since the late 1980s, was estimated to cost about $150 million.
The price had doubled in the last year when officials recalculated
water needs on the city's growing west side and additional treatment
requirements imposed by federal and state clean-water standards,
said City Manager John Mezera.
The
city has put aside $61 million for the project.
The
filtration plan was adopted by a City Council Utility Committee
last Friday. It could be operational by 2006, Mezera said.
The
City Council already had awarded contracts for drawing water from
the Kankakee River. Construction for that plan was to start in
2004 and the switch to Kankakee River water would occur in 2006.
Work was stopped when city officials began studying filtration
early this year.
A
water rate increase would not be necessary to pay for the filtration
plan, Mezera said. Instead, the city would sell $35 million in
bonds, which would be repaid with water user fees and funds that
had been earmarked for capital improvements that won't be necessary
if the Kankakee River plan is dropped, he said.
"The
Kankakee project would have required very significant customer
rate increases, not to mention the additional projects that would
have required rate increases," Mezera said.
"By
switching to this [filtration] project, we're able to live within
our means and still address all of the state and federal concerns
and our concerns for quantity."
The
city has 21 wells capable of supplying about 23 million gallons
of water per day to the current 118,000 residents.
Tests
in 2000 showed that the well water contained 8 to 15 picocuries
of radium per liter, exceeding by up to three times the federal
standard of 5 picocuries that takes effect on Dec. 8 this year.
Mezera said filtration would remove all but trace amounts of radium.
The
permissible amount of contaminants will drop from 20 picocuries
of radiation per liter of water for each of two radium isotopes
to a combined reading of 5 picocuries per liter.
In
Illinois, 77 water systems have an Illinois EPA waiver to operate
in violation of the federal standards for radium, including the
Will County towns of Channahon, Lockport and Plainfield. Radium
is a suspected cause of bone cancer, but its danger at low levels
has been a matter of debate.
In
April the Illinois EPA approved a $1.3 million low-interest loan
for Sugar Grove to drill a new well and install a treatment system
to remove radium. A program to filter radium from well water in
Oswego also was begun earlier this year. Other communities have
been forced to drill to deeper aquifers to find clean water.
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