Liner to be installed at Cedar Rapids wastewater plant lagoon

The city of Cedar Rapids is putting a new liner in a storage lagoon for incinerator ash at its wastewater treatment plant to comply with new state rules.

Those rules from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources require ash-storage lagoons to be treated like landfills, city officials said this week.

The new lagoon liner will cost $913,604, which will be paid through user fees. The city has a second ash storage lagoon at the plant that will be upgraded later.

Steve Hershner, the city's utilities environmental manager, reports that the city has used the ash storage lagoons for 25 years. The city accumulates ash in one lagoon for four to five years and switches to the second lagoon while the ash in the first dries and is excavated for use elsewhere, he says.

In the past, the ash had been used at the local landfills for cover and road building. The DNR, though, no longer allows the Cedar Rapids plant's ash to be used in that fashion, Hershner says. He says it now will be used as a reclamation material at a local quarry.