Efforts to rehabilitate Meridian’s dilapidated sewer system and upgrade its aged freshwater facilities are expected to cost the city millions of dollars over the next few years, the Meridian City Council was told Tuesday.

David Ruhl, of Waggoner Engineering, which contracts with the city to oversee the city’s sewer work relating to the federal consent decree, said Meridian is forecast to spend around $54 million over the next three years in its efforts to repair and restore its wastewater system.

The city of Meridian signed onto a consent decree in August 2019 after being sued by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Justice and Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality for repeated sanitary sewer overflows. The city allowed untreated sewage to overflow the sewage system and mix with groundwater, which is a violation of the Clean Water Act.

The 19-year consent agreement outlines a series of improvements to both the city’s physical infrastructure, which suffers from chronic neglect and decades of deferred maintenance, as well as the implementation of new policies and procedures within the city’s departments, to eliminate the sewer overflows. Projects to identify the full scope of necessary improvements are still underway, but estimates put the cost of the consent decree at at least $100 million.

The Meridian City Council in 2020 authorized planned increases to residents’ water bills of 9% per year through 2025 to fund the work. At the same time, the council issued $41 million in bonds to jump start the projects.

Ruhl said Tuesday the city has also received $17.9 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding, $705,000 from a Community Development Block Grant and a $10 million federal appropriation to bring the total funding for the consent decree to $68,576,468.94. Another effort by the city’s federal delegation is underway to potentially secure another $14 million in funding in the upcoming budget year.

While it may appear the city doesn’t need to worry about the money, ongoing and planned infrastructure projects will quickly eat up the available funding. Of the $68 million, the city is projected to enter the 2025 fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, with just $20 million unencumbered, Ruhl said. Projects planned for FY2025 include:

— Highway 80 Phase 2-B at $2.5 million.

— West Meridian Trunk Line Phase 1 at $2 million.

— West Meridian Trunk Line Phase 2 at $3.2 million.

— Eastern Gardens Pump station at $6.2 million.

— Highway 80 Phase 3 at $5 million.

— A project to dredge equalization basin 1 at the south wastewater treatment plant at $450,000.

— Annual term bids for sewer line repair at $3 million.

— East Meridian Headworks upgrades at $500,000.

Once costs for designing the projects, engineering work and construction are added up, Ruhl said, the city will be roughly $6 million in the hole with its consent decree by the end of the 2025 fiscal year. That deficit will grow to $30 million by the end of FY2026 and $54 million by the end of FY2027.

Council members were told in issuing the original bond for the consent decree that additional bonds would likely be needed in the future. To continue with the consent decree work, Ruhl said, more funding will be needed after the first of the year.

“We need the money in early 2025,” he said.

If funding becomes an issue, the city could look to delay some of the planned projects, Ruhl said, but he does not recommend that unless absolutely necessary. Some of the projects are required by the EPA as part of the consent agreement, he said, and postponing others can cost the city more money later down the line.

A recent repair of a collapsed sewer line on 18th Avenue is an example of a project delay, he said. That line is part of the Highway 80 Phase 2-B project, which has been delayed due to difficulty acquiring the necessary rights of way needed to begin construction. Earlier this year the council authorized the city to move forward with obtaining the property through imminent domain after negotiations with the landowners failed.

Meridian’s freshwater system is not part of the consent decree, which deals with wastewater only, but it also is in need of repairs, said Wagoner Engineering’s Dan Hilyer. Hilyer is one of several Waggoner staff working to train and recruit skilled workers at both the city’s freshwater and wastewater plants as part of a one-year contract between the city and the engineering firm.

First up, a project to install two new wells at the city’s north water treatment plant is estimated at roughly $5.5 million, Hilyer said. The wells would be replacements for current wells that are not performing as they should be. The new wells are a worst-case scenario, he said, and efforts are currently underway to explore upgrading some of the existing wells at the plant, which will be much less expensive.

Also needed at the north water plant are projects to relocate of two chemical feed silos, at $1.3 million, and improvements to the electrical building, at $250,000. Hilyer said the electrical building currently sits and the bottom of the north plant site, and water is getting in the building when it rains creating a safety issue that must be addressed.

Renovations to some of the city’s booster pumps are also needed at an estimated cost of $1.5 million, and upgrades to the freshwater infrastructure in the medical district, a grant funded project, has a required match of $3 million.

The total cost of the freshwater improvements is estimated at $11,586,000.