Do you ever wonder why your sanitation bill is higher than your water bill? After all, drinking water is clean and pure, while wastewater is, well, just sewage.
There are numerous reasons your SD1 bill might be higher than your water bill, including the cost of conveyance, the complexity of treatment and the level of regulation.
Drinking water is pushed through pressurized pipelines that are much smaller than sewer lines. These pipes do not have to be constructed at grade, can follow the natural terrain and are typically only 5-6 feet deep.
Sewer lines, on the other hand, are not pressurized. They pull wastewater using gravity and pump stations, and therefore must be built to grade with a certain slope. Northern Kentucky’s hilly terrain makes conveying wastewater more difficult. SD1 often has to cut through hills, deep underground and into hard rock. Trench excavation is very expensive.
There are about 1,685 miles of sanitary sewer pipe in Northern Kentucky along with 122 wastewater pumping stations that work together to convey wastewater to one of three large regional treatment plants or a number of smaller “package” treatment plants. SD1’s plants treat about 35.5 million gallons of wastewater every single day.
That treatment process has evolved dramatically over the last century. Today, SD1 uses sophisticated biological systems, complicated filters and modern disinfection methods in a process designed to protect public health and the environment. That process takes about 16 hours at the Dry Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant.
And when the treatment process is complete, the water SD1 releases is usually cleaner than the river that receives it. And that’s good for our environment and the quality of life within our community.
State and federal regulations have also evolved. When SD1 was founded in 1946, most of our region’s sewage was being dumped directly into the Ohio River.
Today, regulators oversee virtually all aspects of SD1’s operation, including our Clean H2O40 sewer overflow mitigation program. When we launched Clean H2O40, Northern Kentucky was experiencing about 1.5 billion gallons of combined sewer overflows and 115 million gallons of sanitary sewer overflows each year. These result when wastewater escapes our collections system.
We’re working to eliminate and mitigate sewer overflows to make our community a safer and cleaner place. Over the next 20 years, we’ll invest nearly a billion dollars in innovative wastewater and stormwater management solutions and infrastructure across our region.
The next time you wonder why your SD1 bill is higher than your water bill, remember the unique challenges that come with collecting, transporting and treating the millions of gallons of Northern Kentucky wastewater every day. SD1 does all of that for about 2 cents per gallon.