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The city of Keokuk is fighting back against an EPA mandate requiring the town to redesign and rebuild its sewer system. We checked into the matter for this KHQA FactFinder Report.
The EPA is requiring the city to separate its waste water drainage system from its water waste lines.
Right now both sewage and rain water drains into the waste water treatment facility.
Then after the water is treated it is released into the river.
But EPA officials say that method is causing waste water to overflow into the Mississippi.
They are requiring a 60 million dollar upgrade to separate the systems within the next 17 years.
But city mayor David Gudgel says that's not enough time to complete a city wide infrastructure re-build, and the 60 million dollar pricetag is out of reach.
Gudgel says the EPA also has no measurable proof that the city has violated any environmental regulations that would make this mandate necessary in the first place.
Gudgel said, "We are arguing that we are *not* out of compliance and even if we felt corrections needed to be made, that it not be mandated to be done in 17 years at a 60 plus million dollar project for a town of just eleven thousand people. It would be a catastrophe for Keokuk, Iowa."
Mayor Gudgel says the city was already in the works of upgrading its sewer system, but not to the level of what the EPA requires.
Keokuk is one of eight communities in Iowa to receive this mandate from the EPA.
Right now the city is joining with Ottumwa and Clinton, Iowa to hire an environmental law firm to fight the EPA mandates.
That will cost $50 thousand dollars, but Mayor Gudgel says that investment pales in comparison to the 60 million dollar price tag of the rebuild.
