It's the largest project that the City of Lima has undertaken and they are midway through it.
Lima utilities director Mike Caprella speaking with other public officials about the combined sewer overflow storage tank located just off South Collett Street. The 40-million dollar project was mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency as part of the city's consent decree signed in January of 2015.
The project is to decrease the number of sewer overflows from an average of 45 a year to only 5 or less per year. This mandate was unfunded and the city is borrowing the money to get it done. A portion is a zero-percent loan and the rest is at a low-interest rate which is good news for utility customers.
"By doing this creative financing that we've accomplished, we were able to keep the customers' rates low without having a huge increase to pay for this. So we'll have increases but they're going to be very small and incremental," said Mike Caprella.
Caprella says the tank should be completed by the end of 2020. Wednesday was the start of the 16th year for the public officials dialogue luncheons.
