Cloverdale getting ahead in utilities

CLOVERDALE -- Manager Scott Creager of Utilities Management and Control (UMAC) reported that the Cloverdale Water Plant has kept up with the recent rainfall during the Cloverdale Town Council’s regular meeting on Tuesday.

Although more than seven inches of rain has fallen since April 26, the plant’s new UV E. coli treatment system has managed the workload just fine. The system was installed in March at a total cost of about $200,000.

“I deal with a lot of towns, a lot of utilities,” Creager said. “We’re talking towns like Zionsville, Avon. For (the town) to be able to walk in and pay for that and not be paying on it for the next five years, (the council) should really be proud of yourselves and the town for being able to do that. You don’t see it very often.”

The new treatment system is one of many improvements Cloverdale has made in compliance with an agreed order with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM). The town has been under the agreed order since 2012, after nearly being placed on a ban (which would have prevented all new construction) for non-compliance.

“That’s the thing that’s really going to save,” Creager said. “When you’re on that agreed order, it doesn’t matter if you have the money or not. The state is telling you, ‘This is what we need done this year.’ So whether you’ve got to get a bond, whatever, they don’t care. They just want it fixed. So with us getting off that agreed order in the first of next year, if we can push for that and get it done, the town can start doing stuff at our own pace.”

Clerk-Treasurer Cheryl Galloway said that nearly $500,000 has been spent on improvements since the agreed order.

Also part of the agreed order, every quarter the town pays Robert Curry Engineering to record every repair or improvement Cloverdale makes to its utilities and report these to IDEM.

The company has said that, with all the improvements made, the town has a good chance of being released from the order in early 2018.

“If I have anything to do with it, they better take us off of it,” Creager said. “We’ve bent over backwards, we’ve spent the money, we’ve done what we’ve had to do. Yeah, we have a little bit of minor things out there, but you’re not going to go to a town anywhere in this state that doesn’t have some inflow and infiltration problems. You’re just not.”

Gary Bennington added, “And the more of that we take care of, the more likely we’ll be to get off. We’ve only really been working on it the last three or four years.”