NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. (WIVB)- The Niagara Falls Water Board has a plan to improve the waste water plant notorious for being the source of black discharge.
The infrastructure improvement projects are part of the 2018 budget, which also includes a rate hike.
The NFWB is still cleaning up the problems left behind when raw sewage flowed into the Niagara River five times in just three months this summer and fall, according to the DEC.
“Old infrastructure, old technology and we continue to have issues there,” said Board Member Nick Forster. “We’re looking at a lot of avenues to explore what we’re going to do.”
He told News 4 there are talks of spending $120-180 million dollars to replace the 40 year old waste water treatment plant in the future.
For now, they’re focused on just making improvements through a couple million dollars in the upcoming budget.
Forster and Board Chairman Dan O’Callaghan said they’re fixing long-standing problems past administrations let go to the wayside, not just at the waste water treatment plant.
Overall, they’re drastically increasing infrastructure spending next year.
“I think we’ve gone from $400,000 to maybe $4.3 million in infrastructure changes,” said Forster.
He told News 4 the city’s overall water system needs updating to prevent so many water main breaks. They’re also ordering new equipment, including trucks, to replace vehicles more than a decade old that could only be used nine months out of the year.
NFWB Director of Financial Services Kendra Walker told News 4 they are also dealing with increasing health care costs and raises included in newly negotiated union contracts.
Another big ticket item in the budget, she said, are the chemicals used to treat and remove the black raw sewage that leaked.
For the first time in two years, rates are now going up 2.5 percent.
“That may translate to an extra two, three dollars to their bill,” said Walker.
We asked Walker if the rate payers are picking up the cost of legal fees and clean-up of the black discharge through this rate hike.
‘No, no not at all,” she said. “There’s a lot of moving parts so it’s just hitting and coming together right now and we monitor it as the costs come in but we just keep those separate from the regular costs we incur from daily operations.”
The public had the chance to weigh in on the spending plan on Monday night.
Only a few people spoke at the public hearing to tell the board to find more ways to cut.
The water board will now review the budget. Forster says they are going to try to bring the rate increase down.
A final vote will take place at the board meeting next Monday.
