The Sayreville Borough Council has approved a temporary capital budget for 2010 with a last-minute inclusion of $16.5 million to expand the Bordentown Avenue Water Treatment Plant.
The council simultaneously introduced an ordinance at its May 10 meeting that would allow for the facility’s expansion.
Officials said the project would compensate for the dilapidated plant in the Morgan section. The town will be taking that plant out of service, according to Borough Engineer Jay Cornell.
“That one is antiquated and needs to be updated,” he said, noting that it can no longer treat water in accordance with state guidelines.
Expanding the Bordentown plant, as opposed to building a new plant in Morgan, would be more cost-effective, he said, because it would save on staff costs and eventually lead to the borough being self-sufficient.
The expansion would double the capacity of the treatment plant from 7 million gallons per day to 14 million gallons, which would make operations more efficient, according to borough Business Administrator Jeff Bertrand.
“The expansion would meet the borough’s current peak demands, plus future demands,” Cornell said.
The borough pays $1.8 million a year to the Middlesex Water Co., which raised its rates by 15 percent this year, Bertrand said. The contract expires in 2013. With the treatment facility’s expansion, the borough can avoid renewing that contract, he said.
“We cannot process enough water through the water treatment plant [now] without losing dependency on Middlesex Water,” he said. “We need the plant in order to get off that [contract] and be more efficient.”
The borough’s chief financial officer, Wayne Kronowski, said the money that would normally have been paid to the water company would be used to offset the costs of the expansion.
“A portion would be used for payment of debt service,” he said. “So, hopefully, we’ll be at a break-even point.”
Sayreville resident Barbara Kilcomons expressed concerns at the May 10 meeting about the costs associated with expanding the facility.
“It seems to be extremely excessive in these hard times,” she said. “I don’t think this community can afford it, [and] I think it should be on the backburner.”
Mayor Kennedy O’Brien assured her that the time to do the project is now.
“The plant is a phase project,” he said. “This is the opportune time to build something in terms of very [good] financing costs.”
Bertrand agreed and said the expansion of the facility would ultimately save the borough money.
“Sometimes we need to spend a nickel now to save a dime later, and I think that’s what we have here,” he said. “This would put us in a very good position to be self-sufficient.”
The project calls for the consolidation of the Morgan plant’s small pressure filter operations into the expanded, modernized and larger multi-stage plant on Bordentown Avenue.
The expansion would most likely include the installation of a new water treatment train, which generally consists of pre-treatment clarifiers, filters, and the associated piping and equipment, to operate alongside the existing treatment facilities.
The $16.5 million estimated cost of the project is to be paid through New Jersey’s Environmental Infrastructure Trust Program, which provides low-interest loans to fund clean-water projects.
The council referred the application on Monday to the state Local Finance Board for further review and approval of the bonds.
Construction would commence this fall or next spring, Cornell said, depending on when the bonds are received and the application is complete.
The public hearing and possible adoption of the water treatment expansion is scheduled for June 14.