Poynette’s Wastewater Treatment Plant, located along West Mill Street.

Poynette’s Wastewater Treatment Plant, located along West Mill Street.

At the Village of Poynette’s Committee of the Whole meeting, preceding Monday’s Village Board meeting, board members expressed interest in a proposal to provide wastewater services for the Village of Arlington.

Village Administrator Craig Malin explained that the village had received an inquiry from the Village of Arlington exploring whether there was interest in Poynette providing wastewater treatment service for Arlington.

“It might be mutually beneficial in that we have more than sufficient capacity that is not being utilized as we speak,” said Malin, “and we have enough capacity even for planned growth, so if you have unused capacity that you’re not monetizing, you’re not getting all the revenue you could get.”

The proposed idea, according to Malin, would involve a sewage line being installed from Arlington to Poynette, where it would be treated for some regular fee. The choice in front of Arlington officials, Malin told the board is whether it would be more effective to build a new sewage treatment plant, or to have it sent to Poynette.

Poynette Village Board President Diana Kaschinske asked, “So that would be forever?”

“It would be for a very long time,” said Malin.

Admitting to not being in an area of personal expertise, Kaschinske asked Village Engineer Kory Anderson if that would be within Poynette’s capacity.

“Your current treatment plant has 470,000 gallons of capacity per day,” said Anderson, going on to explain. “Your sewer system is not perfect, it leaks.”

Anderson pointed out that there is a level of “infiltration and inflow” in which clean and non-sewage water gets into the system for treatment unnecessarily adding to the total work being done.

“For the last couple years they’ve done a good job of fixing issues, so they have it down to--on a dry day--90,000 gallons coming in,” said Anderson. “If it rains there are 200,000 gallons coming in...we have gone out at night to find out where some of these issues are and those are future capital improvement projects for those that have to be replaced.”

To sum, Anderson said that the Poynette plant has a great deal of capacity available and could likely take additional flow from another source. As Arlington and Poynette look at the option, one of the authorities that would be involved would be the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. According to Anderson the DNR has encouraged “regionalizaton” of sewer services with fewer systems operating overall and fewer sources of discharge into natural waterways.

“This wouldn’t be the first one: Fall River pumps into Columbus, and up north [General Engineering] work with Loyal which pumps over to Greenwood,” said Anderson. “This happens quite a bit.”

Trustee Steve Mueller expressed concern over the health of Poynette’s stream absorbing that additional water, to which Anderson suggested that the stream could naturally handle it and that additionally there would be more detailed exploration of that question in the preliminary steps of the process.

The Village of Poynette is looking at a project to upgrade the village’s wastewater treatment system, according to Director of Public Works Scott Gorman.

“There is going to be a need for a physical plant upgrade, but by doing this, not only would the village and the residents will be paying for it, they would help us,” said Gorman, going on to highlight that the project would at the least be a multi-year process.

At the end of the discussion, without a formal vote, Malin took the direction of moving forward to have a study done on the potential project, asking the Village of Arlington to pay for it.

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