Holiday Hills sanitary sewer lines on track for connection this spring

Come spring 2023, Holiday Hills homeowners on Holiday and Sunset drives should be able to connect their sewers to the village’s new sanitary sewer system, the system’s manager said.

Construction of the system began in May to provide sanitary sewer to Holiday Hills and the adjacent unincorporated Le Villa Vaupell subdivision.

How long it will be before each one of the town’s 250 homes actually connect to the system is unknown, said Mohammed Haque, district manager for the Northern Moraine Wastewater Reclamation District.

When those connections are made is a “moving target,” Haque said.

“I would hope as many as possible would see the advantage” of being on a public sewer, he said.

The Holiday Hills Village Board approved an agreement with the district in July 2021 to connect residents to the district’s wastewater treatment plant. That agreement also allowed residents until Dec. 31, 2038, to connect.

The connection fee is just under $11,000, plus the cost for residents to move their sewer connection to the street and abandon existing systems. Once homes connect to the public sewage system, they are charged a basic fee of $41.50 a month, according to the agreement.

Mickey Fortman Brown is one of those homeowners who could connect on Sunset Drive, the main east-west road through town.

In 2020, with their 50-year-old septic system failing, she and her husband paid $22,000 to have it rebuilt, Brown said.

Their new private septic system has a 30-year-life span, she said.

“We’d like to grow old here” Brown said, adding they were not sure if they could do so with the cost of abandoning the new system and connecting to the new sewer lines.

In its agreement with the district, the village notes that most homes in the tiny town on the Fox River have private septic systems – either mounds or septic tanks – in an area with high water tables.

Haque can attest to that. During this summer’s construction season, contractors had to drill dewatering wells that added about $1 million to the overall $8 million price tag.

The high water table is part of the reason the district has wanted to connect in Holiday Hills for at least 20 years, Haque said.

If residents choose to connect within three years of when the lift system is operational, they can pay the connection fee back over 30 years, with 4% interest.

Hague said he understood why residents who improved their systems may want to wait to connect.

“Some people had put in a sizable investment into a system,” he said. That is why residents are being given 15 years to connect, and time to pay off those fees, he said. “It gives time to gather the funds … to pay for the connection.”

The water district has its own loan to pay back: $5.2 million from the state’s revolving loan fund. Another $3.5 million came from an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency grant for communities without public sewers. They received one of the first grants issued since the program became available in 2021, agency spokesman Matt Butterfield said.

To help control construction costs, the entire sewer project was split into to phases, Haque said. A second phase will not begin until funding is secured, he said. That phase of the project plans to reach 227 homes that are not adjacent to Sunset or Holiday drives and the Le Villa Vaupell area.

Phase 2 “may be broken up further, depending on funding,” Haque said.

The district is working to find more grants with help from U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood’s office and McHenry County, Haque said.