Legislation allowing the city to remove sludge out of the Ironton water treatment plant will make its way before council after receiving a recommendation from city council’s finance committee at last night’s meeting.

Tuesday, August 21, 2001

Legislation allowing the city to remove sludge out of the Ironton water treatment plant will make its way before council after receiving a recommendation from city council’s finance committee at last night’s meeting.

The committee accepted a bid placed by MSD Environmental Services to provide the sludge dewatering services. The process involves pressing water out of sludge and taking the dried sludge out of the city. The company placed a bid for $11,100 for working 5 days for 8 hours each day. According to the city’s policy, any work that costs above $10,000 must be placed to bid.

Cleaning Clearwell 1 was also discussed at the meeting. The committee received several bids for the project with a wide range in price. Bids ranged from $15,000 to $61,000. The committee asked Mayor Bob Cleary to check the references of the lowest bidder before the committee makes any recommendations.

Cleary also gave an update on the marina project and told council he planned on spending about $1,000 more on the marina development. The marina will produce more revenue that what was anticipated because more boaters are using the facility. Currently, about 30 boaters rent dock space.

Recently, council adopted an ordinance giving the mayor the go-ahead to seek a Waterways Safety Fund Grant from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources-Division of Watercraft that will provide funding for the first phase of a three-phase project that will develop the site.

The total cost of the project will be over $1 million, so the city has broken the project into three phases.

The first phase will be to dredge the waterway to make the channel deeper and to add docking. This phase is estimated to cost around $300,000.

The second phase of the project will go to develop more docking, construct restroom facilities and to develop access roads to the site.

The final phase of construction will develop parking, camp sites, picnic areas, other recreational areas and complete the docks.

So far, the city has not received word if the state has approved the request for the grant. City Engineer Joe McCallister said he expects to hear from the state agency "any day."