Chattanooga Prepares for $186M WIFIA Loan

Chattanooga City Council authorized $186 million in bonds for a handful of wastewater projects for which it was invited to apply for Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) funding.

The WIFIA funding fulfills a portion of $337 milliion planned for upgrades to stormwater and wastewater infrastructure throughout the city to address a U.S. EPA consent decree. The city council committed to these upgrades in February 2022.

According to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the city provided a fact sheet in February, which detailed the intention and specifics of the projects.

Included in the projects are construction of three equalization stations near the Hamilton County Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority. These stations will be used to handle extreme weather events, particularly those involving heavy precipitation, to create more capacity to handle stormwater. Ultimately, these stations will reduce sewer overflows, which have caused problems for the city.

Additionally, the funds will be used to find and replce old sewerlines to further bolster the city against overflows. Lastly, the Moccasin Bend Wastewater treatment plant will see upgrades to its treatment processes, including thermal hydrolysis for biosolids separation, wet weather treatment upgrades and “replacement of oxygen at the plant,” which presumably relates to blower upgrades. In fact, the Moccasin Bend facility recently celebrated construction of three 10 million gallon tanks that were also built to increase the facility’s extreme weather capacity and provide resilience to future storms.

In an interview with Local 3 News in Chattanooga, Mark Heinzer, interim director of the Moccasin Bend Environmental Campus said these tanks have already begun to show their benefits to the city.

“On August 10 of this year, when Chattanooga was hit with a 10-year rain event that flooded streets, parking lots, and buildings, one very important thing did not happen — not one gallon of untreated wastewater overflowed into the Tennessee River, thanks to the city’s new wet weather equalization station,” said Heinzer in the TV interview. “Instead, 18 million gallons of wastewater and rainwater overflow was pumped into tanks and later slowly released into our treatment plant for purification.

“This represents a huge step forward in our work to preserve our outdoor resources and create a more sustainable future for our city,” he continued, “and I want to thank all of the talented, dedicated partners and teams who helped make it possible, including our Department of Public Works, Jacobs Engineering, Hazen and Sawyer, and Reeves Young Construction.”

In addition to the WIFIA funding, Chattanooga is seeking state revolving loan funds as well as money from the Chattanooga enterprise sewer fund. According to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, “the city is now about halfway through a 17-year program to make improvements required under its consent decree, which the city anticipates will cost about $1.1 billion.”