The Good Hope City Council at their meeting Monday night.

Good Hope’s wastewater plant is in the middle of an overhaul, and the project is proceeding smoothly. 

Tyler McKeller, general manager of Living Water Services, provided an update on the progress of the work being done at the plant. 

McKeller said he came to the City Council around seven months ago, reporting that the wastewater plant’s main process rotors were starting to fail. 

There hadn’t been any work on them for probably 25-30 years he said. 

He said the estimate for the total cost of the project was around $40,000. He tried to break it into multiple stages to lessen the load on the city. 

“It’s a great expense,” he said. 

In December, two of the plant’s four rotors were taken out and sent to a shop for repairs. 

McKeller said the cost of replacing the first two rotors was actually around $5,000 under his original estimate, so the total cost of the project is trending lower than anticipated.

“I’m pleased to report that those are back in and working perfectly,” he said. 

The other two rotors are in the process of being repaired right now, and will soon be back in place, McKeller said. 

Before the replacement rotors, the plant needed all four rotors running at all times to handle the city’s wastewater, but it is working smoothly with just two of the newly repaired rotors, he said. 

“The plant itself is working fantastic just with two, so once all four are back in we’ll be able to alternate them,” McKeller said. 

By alternating the use of the rotors, their life spans should be increased, he said. 

McKeller also presented the city’s annual Municipal Water Pollution Prevention report that is required from the Alabama Department of Environmental Management. 

The MWPP report is a full account of any incidents or projects that took place for a city’s sewer system in a year, and it is scored from 0-783, with a zero being a perfect score. 

“It acts like a report card,” McKeller said.

Good Hope’s sewage system received a score of 120, mainly due to infiltration problems that the city has been dealing with for some time, McKeller said. 

Whenever there is a hard rain in the city, there is a lot of overflow, and that has to be reported to the state every time it occurs, he said. 

No system will be perfect in preventing infiltration, but Good Hope’s could be improved, and they have an idea of where the major problems could be, McKeller said.  

“We’ve got to attack that a little bit better,” he said. “We’ve got to address that this year.”

Aside from that issue, the rest of the sewer system is in good shape, and the wastewater plant itself has no problems, McKeller said. 

“The numbers are perfect,” he said.