Friends comments on MWRD 2007 budget

At the December 13th Board of Commissioners meeting to approve the 2007 MWRD budget, John Quail from Friends of the Chicago River presented these comments.

To the Board of Commissioners:

My name is John Quail and I am the manager of watershed projects for the Friends of the Chicago River. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to appear today and give testimony on the 2007 Budget.

We have some specific comments on budget items, and then have some general clarifying comments and questions.

1. Stormwater management: We are very enthusiastic about the potential of this department, and would like to respectfully offer these thoughts.

1. We would recommend that the assistant public information rep position is filled by someone with communications experience using green infrastructure techniques, and best management practices. It would also be helpful if this person had experience in community outreach and relations, because we believe that the overall success of this program will be dependent on proactive outreach and communications.
2. We would also like to see a separate line item allocation for research and development within the stormwater management division. We foresee the need for pilot projects that will be developed in the field to solve unique management problems, and as the District has done in so many areas in the past, to push the envelope of the knowledge base of what is possible for the region.

2. Energy: We see some potential areas for long term cost savings.

1. Given that electricity prices under Illinois’s current form of deregulation are likely to remain volatile for the immediate future, we recommend that the district consider price stability as a significant factor in addition to reliability, and price. An evaluation of stable pricing options would certainly include renewable resources like wind, and cogeneration. An example of this would be the state of the art treatment facilities like the City of Ottawa’s Pickard Centre, which uses digesters to capture methane gas and carbon dioxide from the wastewater treatment process and converts 32 percent of the available energy in the digester gas to electrical energy (electricity) and 48 percent to thermal energy (heat).
2. Financing of this type of program might be available from the federal clean renewable energy bond program which is going to issue $500 million in 0% bonds in 2007.

3. TARP: McCook Reservoir. With the completion of stage one overburden removal in 2006, is it planned that the stage one portion come online ahead of the completion of stage two as it would help reduce CSO’s.

4. Budget priorities (Master Plans): Maintaining the District’s infrastructure clearly needs to be the highest priority and we understand that the Master plan recommendations of $2.1 billion will absorb the District’s entire available non-referendum debt capacity through its sunset in 2016. It would be helpful to understand the relationship between the proportion of these master plans that are required under current regulation or industry best practices and the portion that is elective, or optional? This is relevant given that because of funding limitations we are still 15+ years away from completing TARP.