Wastewater project in Dodson to start next spring

The Town of Dodson was given both a federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and a Treasure Statement Endowment Program (TSEP) award for an estimated $759,000 for upgrades to the Town's wastewater system, including the installation of a new portable generator and transfer switch for the lift station; increase operating depth in the storage lagoon and install open channel disinfection equipment.

In order to receive those grants, Dodson residents will see an increase in their monthly sewer bills, likely to start in January.

"We will have to gradually raise the rates on sewer over the next few years," Dodson Mayor Teresa Cole said.

Mayor Cole said the repair work will include repairing the lagoon's liner and fixing an overflow problem which has spilled water from the lagoon into a nearby ditch that runs into the Milk River.

"There will be an ultraviolet light and when the water goes through there the light will kill any bacteria spilling into the draining ditch from overflow," Mayor Cole said.

The engineering report was drawn up for the Town of Dodson by Great West Engineering and states that the Town's wastewater system includes a gravity collection system that delivers wastewater to a lift station located on the south end of town, constructed in 2007. The wastewater treatment facility performed very well until 2011 when the system received extremely high flows of water, the report states. In late 2011 and 2012, it was an extremely wet time in Dodson and the flows of water which resulted in an overfilling of the capacity of the lagoons causing significant damage, which wasn't discovered until 2014. 2016 was another very wet year in Phillips County and resulted in large flows of water into the stream. Those flows resulted in the Town discharging from the lagoons during the summer and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) was notified and it was then that Great West Engineering negotiated a plan for attaining compliance with wastewater system as the results of the discharges are not permitted by DEQ.

"So, we will repair the liner, fix the overflow, and then run power from the highway to the lagoon and that will run this ultraviolet light that will clean any spillage into the neighboring ditch," Mayor Cole said. "We expect the work to begin this spring."