Wastewater treatment improvements are coming to the City of Kalona as a multi-million dollar project is in the planning stages. Kalona City Administrator Ryan Schlabaugh says the $6.5-7 million project is necessary, “The one that’s being mandated right now by the DNR and the EPA is improvements to our wastewater treatment facility. Which would be what we currently have is a lagoon system where we have three cells, and we need to utilize a more up to date system with respect to ammonia and nitrate removal. So, we’re going to go with what’s called a SAGR system, which is a filtered system.”

A SAGR system stands for “Submerged Attached-Growth Reactor.”

When asked about the potential impact to utility bills for residents of Kalona, Schlabaugh explained, “We tried to be very proactive in our approach to this, and we brought some grant-writing assistance on board too. We can go through ECICOG [East Central Iowa Council of Governments]. We have state and federal grants that would allow us to offset some of that cost as well to the user. We will look, to over the next two years, to do some rate increases. We know kind of what worst-case scenario is if we have to fund the entire thing through our rate system. The positive is we’re kind of in that lower third of utility rates to the user, so we feel we’ve got a little bit of capacity there without too big of a financial impact. But, we’d like to leverage and kind of use the successes we’ve had in previous projects with getting grant funds to come in and help do some cost share on that.”

The estimated timeline for the project is to have it go to bid in 2025 and go online in 2026. The new system will be installed near the current lagoon system, and has a smaller footprint. Schlabaugh adds the city is looking at potentially adding a solar power project to the same area. 

For the full interview with Schlabaugh listen to today’s In Touch with Southeast Iowa program