City pursuing critical upgrade

Electric City needs to upgrade a critical piece of infrastructure that every person in the city depends on, and for which the city will need to arrange several hundred thousand dollars in financing.

Electric City’s 1960s-era sewage lift station, which pumps sewage to the wastewater treatment facility in Grand Coulee, needs to be upgraded soon.

The facility at the southern end of Grand Avenue has two pumps, one that is about 60 years old and no longer works, the other just a few years old.

The Electric City council discussed the issue at their March 12 meeting.

“It will probably come out to about $300,000,” City Clerk Russ Powers said.

The city will likely pursue a short-term loan to help pay for the project, and possibly use money from the Real Estate Excise Tax fund, he said.

“There is a water sewer reserve fund,” Powers said Tuesday, “but since Grand Coulee wants to do repairs to the wastewater treatment facility, those monies are reserved for that.”

“Right now, we weren’t going to raise the rates,” Powers continued, “but it depends on what type of funding we will get. Whatever normal raises were going to occur are going to occur anyway.”

The council discussed the old wiring at the lift station, estimated to be from the 1960s, and the necessity to replace the entire unit, including a new tank, essentially only keeping the working pump that is only a few years old.

Council members agreed that they had to act on the situation, and agreed to have the engineering firm Gray & Osborne come up with estimates for the project.