How we got here
Bellaire residents voted in November to approve two separate bond referendums totaling $70 million to fund stormwater and wastewater projects.
One of the wastewater projects, for $30 million, includes demolishing Bellaire's current wastewater treatment plant and connecting to Houston's wastewater treatment plant.
However, residents voiced their concerns with demolishing the plant and connecting to Houston’s, and questioned why the city couldn’t fix or replace the current plant, leading to the city to prompt HDR Engineering to share a presentation to address these concerns.
In case you missed it
Chris Malinowski, a project manager at HDR Engineering, an engineering firm that conducted a condition assessment on the city's wastewater treatment plant, said HDR found that the city’s plant and lift station is too old, in poor shape and “well beyond their useful life.”
Malinowski said the city’s plant has subsided or sunk six feet in the last 50 years. This has led to electrical equipment, chemical feed equipment, final clarifiers and disinfection tanks being below Harris County’s 500-year floodplain map, a map that shows what areas are at risk for flooding from a bayou, creek or other waterway overflowing during a 0.2 percent (500-year) flood.
“During Hurricane Harvey, it had over a foot of water where the electrical panels are, it’s not a good thing to combine water and electricity,” Malinowski said.
HDR found that the plant’s structural, electrical and mechanical assets are at or past the end of their life. For example, the plant’s main electrical gear is 50 years old, despite being designed to last 30 years, Malinowski said.
“One of the main tanks out there where they call the aeration basin, it was there in the 1940s, so it’s 80 some odd years old,” Malinowski said. “It’s showing signs of cracking. It needs to be addressed right now.”
Additionally, HDR found that Bellaire’s lift station, a facility used to move sewage or wastewater from a lower to a higher elevation, is dangerous for staff to access because it’s located in a median on Bellaire Boulevard, and recommends the city to build the lift station outside the median.
“They have a city truck there every day that has to go check on the lift station,” Malinowski said. “They have to park there, in that line of traffic, go down there and come back.”
Overall, Malinowski recommended the city to decommission the city’s current wastewater treatment plant and connect it to the city of Houston’s, as well as replacing the city’s lift station.
“Regardless of which way the city decides to go, these items have to be addressed,” Malinowski said. “If you rehabilitate that plan, you’re going to have to build up at least a couple feet on some of the tanks, you got to put up good concrete on top of bad concrete to get it out of the flood zone.”
Project funding
During the meeting, Beth Jones, Bellaire’s Assistant City Manager and City Engineer, said decommissioning and connecting to Houston’s plant would only cost the city $6.82 per 1,000 gallons to treat wastewater.
If Bellaire were to rehabilitate the current plant, it would cost $11.12 per 1,000 gallons and to replace the plant with a new one, it would cost $13.84 per 1,000 gallons.
“If we don’t own and operate our own wastewater treatment plant, if we sign a contract with Houston and we send our wastewater to them, it becomes their responsibility to meet and treat their permit,” Jones said.
Additionally, the city has had difficulty hiring and retaining staff who could operate the plants, which Jones said is an industry problem at the moment. For the past three years, the city has had four plant operators; however, they are only staffed 50% of the time, meaning not everything can be done sufficiently.
“This is not a Bellaire problem, this is a municipal government problem, this is anybody who has a wastewater treatment plant,” Jones said. “People aren’t going into this industry and this profession. It’s hard to get good people. We’re constantly in competition with private sectors. Unfortunately, it’s a tough industry.”
What residents are saying
Bellaire resident Charlotte Procter said she is worried that connecting to Houston’s wastewater treatment plant could be expensive for the city in the future, despite it being the cheapest option at the moment.
“It might be the cheapest option for the city, but what are the residents going to have to pay when this wastewater is being treated by the city of Houston?” Procter said.
Resident Gary Brush wondered what a contract with the city of Houston would look like in terms of fees and how long Houston would treat Bellaire’s wastewater. Meanwhile, resident Dan Sebesta questioned why the city is talking about decommissioning or replacing the plant, when they aren’t fixing the current plant.
“I’ve heard a very good talk on why we need to either shut the waste treatment plant down or build a new one, but I didn’t hear one word on what they’re doing to make the current plant reliable and runnable,” Sebesta said. “Let’s spend some time fixing it and see what it needs.”
What council members are saying
Council member Catherine Lewis said she thinks it’s a “bad idea to go to Houston” and that rehabilitating the city’s current plant should be considered.
"In terms of decision about whether we hook up with the city of Houston, I would definitely say 'no, no way,'" Lewis said. "We need to prioritize what we really want."
Council member Ross Gordon voiced his support for connecting the city’s wastewater to Houston’s plant as it allows the city to save money to support community initiatives and prevents risks from “catastrophic failure” in a flood event.
“The fact of the matter is we have a plant that is immediately across the street, whereby we don’t need to carry that risk in our community,” Gordon said. “The important piece here is that the city of Houston carries that risk at large across 2.5 million people. When we own a plant, we carry that risk across 18,000 people. If we build a plant and it floods out the next day, we're back on the hook for paying for it again. Now, if the city of Houston's plant floods out, all 2.5 million people carry that cost.”
Stay tuned
City Manager Sharon Citino said there is currently no date on when city council will vote on which option to proceed with.
