BEATRICE – An engineering services contract for a major wastewater treatment plant project has been approved by the Beatrice City Council.
The contract with Olsson Associates, Inc. is for up to nearly 462,000. The company will oversee installation of a new system for separating solids and liquids at the plant, located next to Chautauqua Park.

"The current system we have now uses a belt press. The belt press is rather old, parts are becoming very hard to come by".
The equipment for the project is on site and City Administrator Tobias Tempelmeyer says about $3.2 million has been spent on the project to this point, with machinery and installation.

WPC Superintendent Dean Kelch says the project also involves renovating an entire building at the plant and follows installation of a new bar screen at the plant, installed after a roof was removed.

"I would say this a little bit bigger project. It's going to be an upgrade of the entire building".

Kelch says the new centrifuges are part of the long-term future for the facility.

"We would like to upgrade our grit system next. Eventually, we will go to an advanced treatment, which will be a sequential batch reactor system. It will do away with the trickling filter and RBCs (rotating biological contactors) This will allow us to treat for phosphorus and nitrogen". The state's been telling us to prepare for this, we're going to have to do that".

A 2014 Capital Improvement Plan estimated the total cost of all improvements at about $10,268,300. So far, new raw sewage pumps have been installed along with the new bar screen in the head works building. The design and construction of an SBR treatment process is budgeted for the 2024 budget year, but preliminary design could start in 2022.