Posted on May 22, 2024
Terminal Ready-Mix will manage the city’s geopool facility under a contract approved by Lorain City Council on Monday.
The geopool facility will handle dredged material from the Black River, separating out the water and sediment until all that is left is usable topsoil.
Lorain received a $20 million grant from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to design and build the facility.
The pools will be operational this summer.
Under the agreement, which was approved unanimously, Terminal Ready-Mix will receive $1.4 million from the city’s grant funds to operate the facility, including determining the dredge cycle and volume of materials to be dredged. They will also monitor the dredging process, anticipated to be July through November. After dredging is complete, Terminal Ready-Mix will handle the dewatering — which turns the dredged material into usable topsoil — through March, and harvest that material between April and May 2025. The process will restart in May 2025 with another dredging cycle.
In other news, Council approved $10 million in anticipated upgrades to the Philip Q. Maiorana Wastewater Treatment Plant on the city’s west side. The facility, constructed in 1988, requires new grit tanks, final clarifiers and a generator, Utilities Director Joe Carbonaro said.
Grit tanks allow sediments like coffee grounds, eggshells and sand to settle out of the water being pumped through the facility.
Final clarifiers allow suspended solids to settle out of wastewater.
The project, which went to bid last month, will be paid for through a 20-year loan at a roughly 3 percent interest rate, Carbonaro said. It will take about two years to complete and was budgeted for, he said.
Residents will not notice a difference in their service, and the work will not have an immediate impact on rates, he said.
Council also designated May as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, awareness month in the city.
