By ALEXANDRIA

BOURNONVILLE

Journal Staff Writer

MARQUETTE — After receiving a $12.5 million Clean Water State Revolving Fund loan, the Marquette Area Wastewater Treatment Facility hosted a celebratory tour of all the work accomplished in the last year. Local leaders as well as the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy Director Phil Roos were in attendance.

The loan, awarded in May 2023, is meant to facilitate low-cost financing to communities for water quality infrastructure projects.

Director of municipal utilities Mark O’Neill led the tour, explaining the need for the various parts of construction.

“We’re putting in a septic receiving station,” O’Neill said. “There’s a need in the area for it so we’re going to get revenue from that. That’s going to help pay for the receiving station and then also the plant over the terminal.”

O’Neill also explained the reason for an additional belt filter press.

“When you don’t have redundancy (and) we have one belt filter press in the middle of winter, it’s critical,” he said. “We have to have it. If that goes down and it’s down for a substantial amount of time, we’re completely relying on those liquid tanks for storage and we have to make room in those tanks and that’s when we start stressing the treatment plant.”

As for sustainability, O’Neill discussed with Roos how the plant runs off of methane gas produced from its anaerobic digesters.

“We capture the methane gas and we burn it into combined heat and power units,” O’Neill said.

This way, the plant can run off of biogas products as opposed to natural gases.

Additionally, O’Neill said that biosolids that come from the treatment process can be used as fertilizer on farms. Otherwise, biosolids are often deposited at a landfill.

Currently, there is a farm in Trenary that uses the biosolids as fertilizer for its crops that are for animal use only. A more thorough refinement process is needed for biosolids to be brought to a quality that is considered safe to use for crops that humans eat.

Roos said he learned a lot from the tour of the treatment plant.

“A lot of people depend upon it,” he said. “We have a lake right across the street from us here. We keep that clean. And we’re well on schedule moving along with some really important improvements here. It’ll make a difference for all the citizens of Marquette, both in terms of public health, clean water and, (in the) long term, keeping costs low.”

Updating water treatment plants allows them to run more efficiently, cost less to operate and, as a result, reduce rates charged to customers.

“We need to keep upgrading those to make sure we keep our water resources and our drinking water clean,” Roos said. “It’s a long-term thing. It’s not just for this generation but for future generations as well.”

Looking to the future, Roos said he hopes the billion-dollar gap between the need in the water treatment industry and the amount of money available for those updates can be closed.

“We’re trying to fill that. A billion dollars a year is a lot of money, but now’s the time. We need to get (updates) done now because we’ll save costs in the long run.”

Alexandria Bournonville can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 506. Her email address is abournonville@miningjournal.net.