City of Albany awarded $12 million loan to facilitate work at sewage plant

ALBANY – A $12 million low-interest loan awarded by the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority to the city of Albany will be a big boost to the city’s overall improvement project for the aging infrastructure.

Up to $3 million of the loan, which comes with a 2.6% interest rate, is forgivable, making the deal even sweeter. The money is earmarked for rehabilitating Albany’s wastewater treatment plant, making it more reliable and efficient.

“That plant was built in ‘58,” Albany Mayor Bo Dorough said. “If you rehabilitate — I like to say rebuild — you can change out the components.”

The city is in the process of renovating underground pipes to separate stormwater and sewage, which will eliminate the plant having to treat rainwater. That will reduce the stress on the plant and the amount of untreated sewer water that is discharged into the Flint River and leaks that have occurred in some city neighborhoods over the years.

The overall price tag for the separation project and renovations at the wastewater treatment plant originally came in at about $125 million several years ago, but as the city has bid phases of the overall plan it has found steep price increases.

The city is under a mandate to achieve 85% separation of stormwater and sewage by June 2025 or face steep fines of up to $10,000 per day.

The original estimate for the work at the plant was $18 million, but that estimate is likely to be surpassed significantly by the time the city receives bids for the work, the mayor said.

“The consultant had designed those improvements for the wastewater treatment plant,” Dorough said. “It was put out for bid twice and nobody responded. That work is very specialized. You’ve got a pretty small segment of the construction industry that does this work in the Southeast. They’re all saturated with work because of all this (federal) stimulus money.”

The consulting company handling the project is looking to divide the project at the plant into several smaller phases with the hope that it will move it forward more quickly.

The 85% separation goal is not related to the work at the plant, the mayor said.

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