DANVILLE — The City of Danville is potentially looking at millions of dollars worth of upgrades to its sewer system and more from grants.
David Ruwe, Public Works Director, said the city is applying for a $25 million loan through the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) loan program to complete the sewer work.
“This is through the IEPA loan program, and the reason we’re going after this funding is that we’re likely to receive 30% principal forgiveness,” Ruwe said. “Over the course of the next five years, we intend to do all five phases of this… and it’s estimated that this will be around 25 million dollars worth of sanitary sewer repairs.”
With the 30% forgiveness, Ruwe says they can do more work for less money.
“If we were to do up to 25 million dollars worth of work over the next five years… we would only pay 17.5 million for $25 million worth of work,” Ruwe added.
Recently the NAACP held a Floodplain workshop discussing some of these concerns.
Ruwe said that sometimes the sewers get overwhelmed during intense rainfall and occasionally back up into people’s homes, churches, and other areas.
“Back in the day, they allowed a lot of roof drains and things to be tied into our sanitary sewers,” Ruwe explained. “When we have heavy rain events, those pipes can get very well overwhelmed and sometimes can even back up into people’s homes and basements.”
Another grant, the DCEO Site Readiness Grant, Ruwe says, will provide the city with “$1.371 million and it’s only a 20% match, so roughly $275,000 to get a $1.6 million sewer line extension for this project.”
This project will take place near Newell and Bowman streets. It would ‘terminate’ a 50-acre parcel on the northwest side of Newell and Bowman, Ruwe said.
“The DCEO Site Readiness Program,” he says, will give the city, “a sanitary sewer extension down Bowman … with the intent to make several large-scale sites developable, which we have a shortage of in the city of Danville.”
Ruwe said the repairs would “fix flow issues that we have in the city.”
You can find a map of the proposed plans and phases on the city’s website in the agenda packet for public works dated August 12.
“We’ll expect the grant agreement here in a couple of months and get it designed and constructed here in the next couple of years,” Ruwe said.
Ryan Scholl also voiced his concerns about the retaining wall near his property on North Vermilion Street.
“I’ve taken two to three five‑gallon buckets of concrete from that retaining wall and got rid of them,” he said. “Most recently, there’s probably about another two five‑gallon buckets lying on the sidewalk… I’ve hit my house multiple times with concrete chunks… Luckily, nothing’s broke my window yet.”
Scholl added that the area is dangerous, and Mayor Rickey Williams Jr. agreed.
Scholl said there was a group of around 20 bicyclists in the area and one of the riders ‘flipped over’
Scholl said the rider told him, “my bike hit this chunk of concrete that came from my retaining [wall].”
However, Williams says the project is costly. He said the city is trying to get IDOT to cover the costs.
“Just for his yard alone, almost $80,000,” Williams said. “So multiply that times 13 to 15 [properties]. So the project is going to be well over a million dollars.
“If the state will pay that instead of us, we could use our million dollars on some other things instead.”