The Aurora City Council is set to vote Tuesday night on a major sewer and water project on the East Side.
Aldermen will vote on a $939,285 contract with Batavia-based Fox Excavating Inc. for a sewer separation and water main replacement along Hoyles Avenue and Jackson Street in the 3rd Ward.
The bulk of the project is installing a new storm sewer to remove stormwater from the combined sewer system at several locations on Hoyles Avenue and a portion of Jackson Street.
The water main replacement has been deemed necessary by city public works officials on Hoyles Avenue, between Fifth Street and Jackson Street, to improve water quality and system capacity.
The storm sewer replacement would be a part of the city’s Long Term Control Plan it has with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to eventually replace all the combined sewer system overflow.
The goal is to get rid of combined sewers and make the two sewer systems separate.
Aurora is similar to about 200 other cities nationwide that have combined sewer systems. Those were considered state-of-the-art when designed years ago.
When there is no rain, the sewers take wastewater to about 15 interceptors that run parallel to the Fox River, and run that wastewater to the Fox Metro treatment plant, where it is treated and released into the river.
But when it rains, the same sewers collect stormwater too, and the interceptors overflow, still sending some wastewater to the treatment plant, but some diluted wastewater directly into the Fox River.
Such combined systems are no longer built, but older cities like Aurora have them. The EPA permits them, but only if the governmental jurisdiction involved has a long-term plan to convert them to separate sewer systems.
Much of the long-term plan has been done during the past decade with projects where new sewers were built to separate sanitary and storm flows.
The next part of the program is to build a large tank and hold the overflow water underground. After peak times are done, the water can be treated and sent to the Fox Metro Water Reclamation treatment plant.
The city is in the midst of having engineering done on that eventual project, estimated to be about $100 million.
slord@tribpub.com
