Page last updated on August 15, 2022 at 1:53 pm
Each week, Mayor Hamilton and Deputy Mayor Griffin provide video updates on recent news and key initiatives.
Transcript
Don Griffin:
Hello, folks. I'm Don Griffin. I'm the deputy mayor for the City of Bloomington.
Vic Kelson:
And I'm Vic Kelson, the utilities director for the City of Bloomington.
Don Griffin:
And Vic, tell us today what you've got in store.
Vic Kelson:
Well, we're talking about the Winston Thomas Project that the utility staff has proposed to the Utility Service Board this week. What we're interested in is considering relocating our entire operation to the Winston Thomas property on the south side.
Don Griffin:
Why?
Vic Kelson:
Well, CBU's been at the Miller Drive location for over 50 years now. And over that time, we've grown quite a lot. And we've gotten to the point where we're just bursting at the seams. A lot of our equipment ends up parked out in the rain. And we really don't have a place to store parts, like pipes and castings and things like that, that are not just sitting out in the sun.
Don Griffin:
So tell us about Winston Thomas.
Vic Kelson:
So the site used to be a wastewater treatment plant. It was the city's wastewater treatment plant until about 1982 or 1983. It's located at Gordon Pike and South Walnut Street behind the animal shelter and the armory down there.
Don Griffin:
Okay. And we founded it when?
Vic Kelson:
Since the 1930s. The wastewater plant opened in 1935, and we've owned it ever since. The plant shut down in 1983 when we built the Dolman plant. And what accelerated that process was the discovery of PCB contamination in some of the industrial wastewater that was going to the plant. So the site eventually ended up on the National Priorities List under the Superfund law, and the city engaged in an extensive remediation project.
Don Griffin:
But it's all clean now. And the EPA has been back there. They gave it a clean bill of health.
Vic Kelson:
Yes, they did.
Don Griffin:
And they said, "You can develop." We can do something with this property now.
Vic Kelson:
We can do anything we want with the property at this point.
Don Griffin:
Okay, so what are our next steps?
Vic Kelson:
Well, the next step is our board. We have presented a master plan to our board that generally suggests how we might reuse the property for CBU's operations. We'd bring all of our operations together there, so we'd have covered storage and a garage, and a service center. And what we're going to do next is the board has asked us to do some preliminary financial analysis to see how that would work, both in terms of expenses for us, and then how our current property would be reused by the city.
Don Griffin:
Okay. So there's a lot to happen, but we're going to be able to get through that. If we get through that, we're going to start sometime in 2023, I think, right?
Vic Kelson:
Hopefully, we'll be able to start working on the formal site design sometime in 2023.
Don Griffin:
So many steps to come. And if you want more information, please visit our website and check us out and learn more about Winston Thomas. Have a good one, folks.