After two hours of questions and public testimony, the Yankton City Commission approved a 44.5-million-dollar rehabilitation project to the 1964-built city of Yankton wastewater treatment plant.
The driving factor for the decision on the retrofit rather than starting from scratch elsewhere has to do with the parameters of the federal ARPA funding that would be possible to take on the project of this magnitude.
Yankton City Commissioner Nathan Johnson made the motion to move forward with the rehabilitation project…
Official numbers are not clear at this time, but an increase in consumer wastewater rates will be needed to help fund the project. Nick Harkness from Cimpl Meats spoke to the commissioners Monday, saying he has concerns with the wastewater rates moving forward.
The reason for the quick decision is that in order to access any of the ARPA funds, the application for wastewater improvements needs to be turned into the state by January first.
