Nic Rowan/Collegian
Last Thursday, the Hillsdale Board of Public Utilities trucks drove around Hillsdale College’s campus, flushing water out of fire hydrants as a part of the city’s bi-yearly effort to purify its water supply.
“We’re doing this now and we’ll do it again in the spring. Flushing out fire hydrants ensures that any hardness or clogs that may have built up in the pipes gets out,” BPU Superintendent of Water Distribution Bill Briggs said.
Flushing out city fire hydrants is just a small part of the BPU’s ongoing effort to fix and maintain the sewers in the city of Hillsdale. At an Oct. 17 meeting, the Hillsdale City Council unanimously passed a grant awarding the BPU $2 million to replace water filters and its grid system, providing the BPU with the means to acquire two new backup power generators for its sewage plant. The city already granted the BPU an additional $7.4 million for this project in 2015.
The need for new backup power generators has been pressing the BPU since July 2015, when a complete power system failure caused a bypass to open, spilling 70,000 gallons of raw sewage into the St. Joseph river. The bypass has since been plugged, but the need for a solution remains.
“At that time, it was determined that we had to come up with a solution — which we did fairly quickly — but these two new generators will ensure that it won’t likely happen again,” BPU director Mike Barber said.
The new grant will cover the costs of the contamination from the spill, and the new equipment the BPU will receive is expected to last 25 years. The city awarded a contract to the power company Consumers Energy to help implement these improvements.
The BPU hopes to have the new backup generators up and running sometime within the next 18 months. In addition, the city council granted the BPU the funds to buy a new electric pump truck, since the BPU has been using the same truck to pump sewage for over 25 years.
“These revisions to the BPU’s budget are routine — they just happen to coincide with the need for new sewage treatment equipment,” City Manager David Mackie said.
Councilman Bruce Sharp said these improvements are necessary to keep Hillsdale’s water infrastructure safe in the future.
“These are things we need to have because a power failure could happen again,” he said.
