Preliminary figures indicate it may cost between $45 million, $60 million to upgrade Troy’s wastewater treatment facility

By Charles Bolinger
Editor • Troy officials have been waiting for months on a preliminary cost estimate from Benton and Associates regarding how much it will cost to upgrade the city’s wastewater treatment plant.

Cameron Jones, a principal and project engineer with Benton, visited the April 20 city council meeting to provide his first cost estimate.

“I know everybody’s eager to know more details so I brought some more details with the promise that I’ll come back in May when we can talk in more detail about these items,” Jones said. “We evaluated between six and 10 different alternatives for the treatment plant.”

He gave the council a summary that shows they have gone through about half of the alternatives. “I specifically picked which ones we started with, so we would get the cheapest options first so I could have this discussion with you tonight. We will follow up with the main meeting to discuss all of the alternatives.”

He said the total project cost is now between $45 million and $60 million, though he said it is leaning closer to the lower end. Two years ago, city officials passed a debt-authorizing ordinance for $46 million, he noted. He also noted that this project has a 15% contingency fee.

“It’s higher than I wanted it to be; it’s higher than everyone wants it to be, but as we’ve come through the last five years, the costs have grown every year,” he said of the price tag. He cited concrete costs for vertical construction going from $800 a cubic yard to $1,500 or $1,600 a cubic yard; there are $12 to $15 million worth of just concrete construction in some of the proposals. He said he and Benton are looking at ways to keep costs down.

City Administrator Jay Keeven noted earlier this year that the IEPA is not joking when it comes to the condition of Troy’s wastewater treatment plant, which was built in 1996. Its average flow is 1.2 million gallons per day (mgd) with a maximum flow of 3.5 mgd. One thing is certain; if city officials do nothing to improve things, at some point the IEPA will tell city officials that they cannot add anything else (residential, retail, commercial or industrial) to the sewer system without first correcting the system’s problems. “That means no new homes could be built, no new businesses, nothing,” Keeven emphasized in March 2026.

Jones said the upgrades will allow Troy to grow its population by 50% along with allowing some commercial development allowances and to keep up with the 100 new homes per year while maintaining a facility that is operable today. Jones added that they aren’t trying to over-design but to meet future permit limits while letting the city keep growing as it has been. 

Public Works Director Rob Hancock said the new wastewater treatment plant is required to meet the total phosphorus discharge limit of .5mg/L by Dec. 31, 2035. Hancock said the next step in this process will be a workshop on May 12 at city hall at 6 p.m. The timeline after the workshop will be that the city council members vote on an alternative at the May 18 city council meeting, followed by Benton submitting a facility plan in July with a full application to the IEPA for a low-interest loan in March 2027. Next, they would need to be ready to bid the project in the fall of 2028. Construction may take two to three years to complete, Jones said.