Several Maeystown residents gathered at Village Hall Monday evening for a scheduled public hearing concerning the community’s wastewater treatment system and upgrades that will be necessary to bring the system up to compliance with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

While village officials fielded a handful of questions, it was also expressed that planning for these upgrades is still in an exceptionally early stage as the village pursues what avenues it can in order to prevent residents from getting saddled with a tremendous bill.

As previously reported, the village currently faces noncompliance with IEPA regulations regarding its wastewater treatment facility, with identified issues stemming from the construction of the current sewage system back in the late 1990s.

Maeystown Mayor Greg Backes explained that, as pits at each house were meant to be built but were not, the treatment facility has long been handling solid waste though it was constructed to chiefly handle liquid waste.

An IEPA document shared by Backes notes that the facility has been cited as the discharged wastewater violates the regulated levels for “ammonia, total residual chlorine, pH and total suspended solids.”

As the village is pursuing a loan from the IEPA to pay for the necessary work – which includes the installations of two septic tanks, rehabilitation of sand filters, replacement of pumps and installation of a polishing reactor – they were required to host a hearing to receive public comment on the matter.

Seth Elliot, an engineer with Heneghan Associates which was contracted to assist in the upgrade process, did much of the talking during Monday’s hearing.

In response to a question regarding the impact of the renovation process on individual residents, Elliot explained the renovations are primarily limited to the treatment facility.

“Since the septic tanks didn’t happen, we need a large septic tank for what’s called primary treatment down at the plant,” Elliot said. “We have two additional tanks we’ll be putting in, and then we’ll use the one existing tank there to do primary treatment, secondary treatment and then go into the sand filter to clean it.”

The only work that would need to be done at village residences is the replacement of pumps at those houses that still have original pumps – estimated to be half of the homes on Maeystown’s sewer system.

Another question from the audience concerned a noise that had been heard coming from the direction of the plant by at least one resident, though no apparent issues had been identified with the facility’s regular operations, and it was suggested this noise was likely from a different source.

Another resident questioned village officials on the estimated cost to each resident for the project, to which Elliot and others responded that the cost is difficult to even ballpark given fluctuating prices.

The “wild card” of international tariffs potentially impacting metal prices was noted in particular.

Elliot spoke to the village board’s efforts to gather funding from a variety of sources.

“We’re going every which way we can,” Elliot said. “It was a stretch to make our (Rebuild Illinois Downtowns and Main Streets) grant work because it’s to ‘revitalize downtown.’ It just happened to be that your sewer plant was within a quarter of a mile of downtown, and they counted it.”

He further explained the difficulty in providing a real estimate.

“There’s no option but to upgrade the sewer plant,” Elliot said. “We can get numbers, but they’re changing daily. I think our last estimate was just right around $2 million for the total project, but things went down. Now they’re starting to go up.”

It was further noted a rural development loan/grant amounting to $500,000 was being pursued, and State Sen. Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro) has apparently been able to secure a $50,000 grant that is taking some time to come through.

Discussion on the village’s pursuit of various grants and other funding opportunities dominated the rest of Monday’s brief hearing.

Backes spoke more about this in an interview following the meeting, also reiterating the village is still in an exploratory phase for applications and thus the actual project is still a long way off.

“We’re open to all options that we can find,” Backes said. “We’ve been trying every avenue for grants and loans.”

Backes also pointed out the difficulty such a small community faces with an issue like this – not only due to how difficult it is to spread out a cost burden among so few residents but also because many larger communities are able to have someone on staff for whom a major part of their job is applying for grants.

Though Backes gave much credit to the village’s clerk regarding grant applications, he also noted he and other village officials are doing what they can in regard to this project for the sake of their neighbors while still having full-time jobs themselves.

“We only have roughly 63 sewer customers that this whole financial burden is gonna get spread across,” Backes said. “Every time we try to talk to different public officials, they say ‘Raise your rates,’ or ‘You should be able to just get grants.’ In some weird way, they feel like you should just be able to wave a wand and get grants. It’s a lot harder for our little community to do that.”