The Indianola Water Resource Recovery Facility construction is 99% complete, and is currently serving Indianola residents with wastewater treatment that meets the new DNR and EPA standards. City Manager Ben Reeves tells KNIA News obviously the plant was a big expense for the city and a burden on taxpayers due to the use of the LOST funds, however many other cities will now have to pay much higher construction costs to install theirs, something Indianola avoided by completing it when they did.

“All the cities are going to have the same regulations hit them. Their costs are going to go up, and they are going to have to take care of those projects under the current construction cost constraints. So that’s a big aspect, we have it taken care of, we are ahead of the game. Another benefit is we have added capacity. That means we can invite more businesses into our industrial park that we are expanding right now, we have more capacity for more residential homes, and that just turns into more rooftops which turns into more businesses. It’s a great synergy in our community.”

Reeves said the water and sewer rates in the state of Iowa are low and removing the nutrients from water is a costly expense so prices are expected to rise across the board.