Wonders and Woes of Fairfield’s Sewer System: Part 1 of 3

Anyone who has driven through Fairfield in recent years may have seen detours, road closures, and giant pipes ready to place in big holes. All of this was part of the city’s Sanitary Sewer System overhaul. Why did the Fairfield City Council decide to do it? The answer requires understanding some basics and background.

Sewer System: Wastewater flows from homes, commercial buildings, and industrial facilities into a network of pipes under the city. These connect to larger trunk lines which converge at the Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Stormwater System: The stormwater and the sewage systems are not the same today. They don’t use the same pipes; or at least, they shouldn’t nowadays. Different rules existed over 100 years ago when our system was built. Then, stormwater and sewer water shared the same pipes, or closely adjacent pipes. Heavy rain events easily overwhelmed the system, and sewage mixed with stormwater would often back up into homes and neighborhoods- something nobody liked. This is called a sanitary sewer overflow (SSO), and prior to the upgrade, SSO’s were frequent in Fairfield.

Infrastructure: The city’s sewage collection pipes and trunk lines were old. Many were too narrow for current needs. Some were made of clay, easily breached by tree roots and other disturbances and the seams were prone to leaking. This meant the sewer system was leaky and vulnerable to incursions of groundwater, and the stormwater system was vulnerable to incursions of sewer water. This was not good for our sewer system, and not good for our watershed. Ultimately, the sewage landed in an outdated treatment plant which was expensive to run, inefficient, suffering from deferred maintenance, and undersized for the city’s modern needs.

Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR): The Iowa DNR handles oversight of sewer systems, and thankfully, stricter rules have evolved in recent years. When DNR officials learned about Fairfield’s frequent SSO’s, they intervened and in 2008 issued an Administrative Consent Order: Fairfield must remediate the problem promptly or perhaps face steep daily regulatory penalties. That’s a heavy lift for a small community. The city really had little choice but to embark on an upgrade that would be a multi-million-dollar, multi-year project.

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA): Fortunately, there was funding assistance available. A low interest loan from the USDA kickstarted the project. Along with funds from cash in hand and wastewater reserves, the city embarked on a major, multi-year overhaul of the Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) and the citywide underground infrastructure.

New and improved: The project has gone forward in phases. The WWTP was dramatically renovated and expanded, trunk lines were replaced with larger, sturdier ones throughout the city, and many old pipes were replaced. While Sanitary Sewer Overflows used to happen frequently, there has been only one in the past several years, and even more improvements are planned.

Coming in Part Two: What the upgrade involved

  Buy Photo