Dixon council accepts bid for $21M project to update wastewater treatment plant

DIXON – Dixon city officials are moving forward with a $21 million project to update the aging infrastructure at the wastewater treatment plant.

“This is going to be a long-term project,” Public Works Director Matt Heckman said. “It’s the revamping of all of the major systems at the wastewater treatment plant. Although they’re still functioning properly at this moment, they have reached a point of mechanical life where we need to update or repair these things before they start to give us fits.”

At the April 21 Dixon City Council meeting, the council approved a bid of $18.257 million from Vissering Construction Co. of Streator. The project is expected to take about 18 months to complete, but next steps are dependent on the city being formally accepted into the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency Water Pollution Control Loan Program, which is how the city is paying for the upgrades, Heckman said.

So far, the city has received preliminary approvals from the program and expects to get that formal approval within the next two months, Heckman said.

Based on the preliminary approvals, the entire project is eligible to be financed through the program, and the principal forgiveness increased from $4.8 million to $6.3 million, Heckman said.

Principal forgiveness is a portion of the loan that is permanently removed; the borrower is not responsible for paying that amount.

“That’s a big win for us. It’s been a pretty good week for the city of Dixon,” Heckman said.

The remaining costs will be financed at 1.2% interest over 30 years with an annual payment of about $600,000, “which is exactly where we want to be,” Heckman said.

This type of financing for costly needed projects “is a fairly effective way of doing the infrastructure,” Mayor Glen Hughes said in an interview with Shaw Local Radio.

Dixon’s wastewater treatment plant “is over 20 years old. A lot of things need to be upgraded,” Hughes said.

“We’ve been talking about these improvements for many years,” Heckman said, adding that if left as is, “you could have a critical failure at the wastewater treatment plant, which would not be ideal.”

Heckman said the updates also incorporate some upcoming regulatory changes from the IEPA mandating that by 2030, plants treating at least 1 million gallons a day must lower their phosphorus levels to 0.5 milligrams per liter, as part of the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy.

“The Illinois EPA sets the standards for wastewater effluent. We take meeting and exceeding those standards very seriously. We want to keep our waterways clean. ... That’s super important to us,” Heckman said.

Other repairs to the plant also were completed in late 2024. There were a couple screws – one broken, another fractured – that needed to be fixed because they’re an important structural part of the system that moves the waste, Hughes said.

The council approved a bid of $439,905 for that project at its Nov. 4 meeting.

Those screws needed to be replaced for a long time. The issue was first brought to the city’s attention under former Comptroller Rita Crundwell and was expected to cost about $35,000, council member Dennis Considine said in a previous interview with Shaw Local.

Considine was elected to the council six months before Crundwell was escorted out of Dixon City Hall in handcuffs in April 2012 and convicted in 2013 of embezzling $53.7 million from the city. While Dixon struggled to pay for infrastructure and other projects, she used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle raising champion quarter horses, a $2 million tour bus, multiple homes and other trappings.

The completion of that screw project wrapped up the list of backlogged projects. Dixon City Manager Danny Langloss said Friday “we’re not catching up with anything from Crundwell” that he’s aware of.