The City of Meridian is making steady progress toward repairing its wastewater infrastructure as it works to comply with a federal consent decree.

 

Meridian entered into the consent decree in 2019 with the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Justice and Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality after the city was found to have multiple sanitary sewer overflows, or SSOs, violating the Clean Water Act. The agreement outlines a 20-year plan to upgrade and repair the city’s wastewater systems and implement the necessary programs and policies needed to maintain the systems moving forward.

 

One project currently underway is a $5 million effort to replace and repair sewer line along Sowashee Creek, said Public Works Director David Hodge. The Highway 80 Trunk Line, which runs along the creek, is one of the major contributors to the city’s problem with SSOs, he said.

 

“And it’s a 24-inch line, so it’s a big one, and all the sewers in the city drain down to Sowashee and they end up downstream and into the south wastewater treatment plant,” he said.

 

The city has already completed Phase 1 of the Highway 80 Trunk Line work, as well as Phase 2A. Hodge said the current project, Phase 2B, will repair and replace approximately 5,000 feet of sewer line from Grand Avenue to 18th Avenue.

 

“We’re excited, very excited to get that one kicked off in the next couple of weeks,” he said. “That will help us tremendously with eliminating SSOs as much as possible, as long as we can continue to maintain.”

 

Funding for the work is coming from the city’s allotment of American Rescue Plan Act funds. Meridian received more than $8 million from the federal ARPA legislation which was matched by the state through a grant program for a total of more than $17 million. In addition to the Highway 80 Trunk Line work, the city has used ARPA money to clean out equalization basins and is upgrading equipment at the south wastewater treatment plant.

 

Hodge said the plant hasn’t seen the investment it needs to keep up-to-date, and the city is having to catch up to keep the plant operational and meeting EPA standards. The EPA is expected to announce tighter regulations on wastewater treatment standards within the next few years, which may force the city to take on further upgrades or build a new plant. In the meantime, however, the current plant needs to stay running.

 

“It’s an old plant, and we’re having to invest in it just because we’re still down the road maybe five more years from now, maybe we can start thinking about building a new plant, but we had to keep this one going,” he said. “Through the years, it’s been under funded and under improved, so we’re catching up for lost time.”

 

Upgrades are also planned for the city’s east wastewater treatment plant. David Ruhl of Waggoner Engineering, which coordinates the city’s consent decree response, said the east plant, while smaller than the south plant, is capable of treating more than what the city is currently sending to it. Projects are in the works to increase wastewater being sent to the east plant, he said, while still leaving capacity for new industry or development that may set up in that part of town.

 

Approximately two years ago, a siphon failure along Sowashee Creek behind Mississippi Power forced the city to make an emergency repair and set up bypass pumps as it worked to design a project for more permanent repairs, Ruhl said. The Eastern Gardens Pump Station project will not only solve the problem, he said, it will eliminate the siphon entirely and allow the east plan to be used more readily.

 

“So we’re going to try to sent at least a million (gallons) there a day to treat instead of 0.25 (million gallons per day), which is just being underutilized,” he said. “So we’re going to pump more of the wastewater there and utilize it and then everything else will get pumped into the Highway 80 Trunk Line to go down to the south plant,” he said.

 

Like the Highway 80 Trunk Line, the West Meridian Trunk Line is also a key route in transporting waste to the treatment plant, as well as a driver of SSOs. The West Meridian Trunk Line runs from the Pilot truck stop on 49th Avenue, under the interstate, west under Highway 11 to Queen City Truck Stop before running north along 65th Avenue, Hodge said. Most of the sewage and wastewater produced on the west side of Meridian runs through that line, he said.

 

A project to rehabilitate the trunk line along 65th Avenue is currently under design, Hodge said, and the city hopes to put it out for bid in the near future.

 

“Most of it may be able to be relined,” he said. “We’ll see.”

 

Work to replace aging clay pipes along B Street and reroute a manhole interfering with the railroad tracks along Second Street are also on the list, Hodge said.

 

While repairing the city’s wastewater infrastructure is a big part of the consent decree, keeping it up is also a major decider in the city’s success. The EPA requires Meridian implement nine Capacity Management Operation and Maintenance programs, or CMOM programs, designed to put the policies, procedures and staff in place to avoid wide scale deterioration of the wastewater infrastructure.

 

One of the most critical CMOM programs is the FOG program, Ruhl said, which stands for Fats, Oils and Grease.

 

“The EPA will tell you, and everyone will, that FOG is the number one cause of SSOs,” he said. “FOG being mainly from food service establishments, but it also includes oil changing facilities and anybody that kinda creates any type of oil.”

 

When introduced to the sewer system, FOG congeals, trapping flushable wipes and other materials and blocking up wastewater pipes, Ruhl said. That eventually leads to SSOs. The city has spent millions working to remove FOG from the sewer system using powerful vacuum trucks, he said, and there is still a long way to go.

 

Working with the City Council, Meridian officials have already updated the city ordinance to address FOG, as well as created a position of FOG coordinator. The FOG coordinator inspects businesses to make sure they are disposing of oil and grease properly and educates residents about the damage such material can do to the sewer system.

 

“It’s very important to have a robust FOG program because we’re spending millions of dollars cleaning it,” Ruhl said. “We need to keep it from getting in the system, because it’s the glue that holds the flushable wipes and all the other debris that people flush, down the toilet. It combines, and then it causes SSOs.”

 

While FOG enforcement is necessary, education is also an important part of the program, Ruhl said, and efforts to inform residents about FOG and its impact are in the works.

 

Funding the consent decree work is a $41 million bond issued by the City Council in 2019, as well as the $17 million in ARPA funding. Hodge said the city is working to sign an agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for another $10 million in funding secured by Meridian’s federal delegation, Rep. Michael Guest and Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, and an additional $16 million federal appropriation is also in the works.

 

Although City Council members are expected to begin the process of a second bond issue to borrow more money for the consent decree work, Ruhl said the city has managed to secure more than $27 million, and, if the $16 million is received as much as $43 million, in outside funding. Going forward, he said, Meridian’s leaders will need to continue to be active and involved to keep the funding coming.