A renovation at the City of Smithville’s waste water treatment plant will soon be underway. The city has procured a $500,000 Community Development Block Grant to help pay for the project, in which the headworks and aeration system at the plant will be rehabbed.

"We've met with the state's ECD (Department of Economic and Community Development) and the city has been officially approved for the CDBG grant for the wastewater plant," City Administrator Hunter Hendrixson told the mayor and aldermen during last week’s meeting of the city council.

"The last time we did an update on that other than annual maintenance was 1991, (when the plant was built)" Hendrixson continued. "Two budgets ago we approved J.R. Wauford Engineering, the city's consulting engineer, to do site plans for the rehabilitation. That has already been done, and the state has approved the plans, although the environmental review process has not been completed. We'll probably bid that out within the next two months. I expect it to be completed by year's end. We won't have to do any other renovations for probably another 20 to 30 years. It (waste water plant) is not as bad as the water plant was but it is getting some age on it and it needs to be updated," he concluded.

The rehab is expected to be $2.88 million. The grant will fund a portion of the cost, but most of the funds will come from the city's water and sewer fund surplus. City officials said the renovation can still be accomplished without raising water and sewer rates. The city was assisted in applying for the grant from the ECD by the Upper Cumberland Development District.