Sycamore hires consultant for $107K to begin federally-mandated wastewater treatment plan

SYCAMORE - The city of Sycamore is moving forward with a federally-mandated plan to treat its wastewater and recently hired a consulting company for $107,000 to help develop the plan.

The Sycamore City Council recently voted, 7-0, to award a $107,000 contract to Baxter & Woodman Inc. of Mokena for the development of an industrial pretreatment program, part of a process mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency last year to help treat municipal wastewater.

According to city documents, about 2.7 million gallons of industrial waste per day flow through Sycamore’s Wastewater Treatment Plant. With the recent expansion and improvements, wastewater is treated with grit removal, micro-screens, sequencing batch reactors and ultraviolet light disinfection.

The required elements of the pretreatment program include an industrial waste survey, local limits development, description of the treatment plant, overview of the plant’s performance and industrial waste history, a description of the plant’s compliance monitoring program, and copies of city records that show legal authority, a description of the program, cost and funding.

In May 2021, the U.S. EPA mandated that municipalities create and implement a wastewater treatment program.

According to the EPA’s website, the national pretreatment program is a component of the national pollutant discharge elimination system (NPDES) program. It’s meant to be a way to ensure water quality conditions are met through federal, state and local collaboration.

Sycamore’s contract with Baxter & Woodman will help the program planning, officials said. City staff determined hiring a consultant would be more cost effective than hiring a city employee to undertake the project, documents state.

“It is pretty specialized, and there are a lot of steps to this program,” said Matt Anderson, public works director for the city of Sycamore. “We had hoped it was not going to be as labor intensive as it is. So we definitely needed outside professionals that deal strictly with this program.”

Anderson said the consultant will develop the treatment program, but it’s unclear if the contract will become an annual one, or if the city will be able to take it on itself moving forward.

“That is something we are trying to determine in-house, if we can administer the program going forward,” Anderson said. “And after, we are going to figure out what time, cost and samplings are required to continually maintain the program.”