Cedar Rapids wants 91 acres by sewage plant — but it’s in Bertram

CEDAR RAPIDS - Ninety-one acres on the west side of Highway 13 near the city's sewage treatment plant is poised to become a battleground anew between little Bertram and its big city neighbor.

Without comment, the Cedar Rapids City Council this week agreed to purchase the 91.3 acres of farmland for $1,346,675 or $14,750 an acre. But there is one big hurdle - the land is in the city of Bertram.

As a result, the city of Cedar Rapids has conditioned the sale on the ability of property owners Larry and Sharon Ditch being able to de-annex their property from the city of Bertram so the Cedar Rapids City Council can annex the property into Cedar Rapids.

The deal does not go forward if the Bertram Planning and Zoning Commission or the Bertram City Council rejects the idea, and it's not yet clear what may happen.

'Obviously, there are a lot of mixed feelings,” Bertram Mayor James Drahos said on Wednesday.

Cedar Rapids, population 128,119, and Bertram, population 298, fought hard over this piece of farmland in 2003 and 2004 when the Ditches asked to be annexed into Bertram after Cedar Rapids said it wanted to buy property next to its sewage treatment plant to locate a garbage transfer station and an open-air compost operation.

Back then, Bertram quickly agreed to the annexation, which sent Bertram's western border leaping over Highway 13 to take in the Ditch property on the east side of the four-lane.

The city of Cedar Rapids subsequently lost its bid to stop the annexation at the state's City Development Board, a defeat it took to Linn County District Court before giving up the fight in 2004.

Drahos said Wednesday that Bertram's June 10 council meeting attracted a sizable crowd of local residents as Cedar Rapids Utilities Director Steve Hershner explained that Cedar Rapids now wanted to purchase the Ditch property for two reasons - so it could continue to serve as a buffer for the city's sewage treatment plant and to protect the city's long-range interests if one day it needed to expand the plant.

'Obviously, they were concerned about Cedar Rapids's plans,” Drahos said of those who attended the meeting. Cedar Rapids officials 'are calling it a buffer area. But Cedar Rapids will not eliminate the possibility of the sewage plant moving that far downstream.

'So that obviously is Bertram's concern.”

Cedar Rapids's Hershner on Wednesday said the city has no plans to expand its sewage treatment plant and, in fact, has plenty of expansion area on the plant's existing site, which will be protected by a new flood wall, and on other city-owned land in Cedar Rapids next to the plant.

Hershner said the city wants to buy the property because the Ditches made the offer.

'Cities don't have the opportunity very often for critical infrastructure areas like their wastewater treatment plant to purchase adjacent property,” Hershner said.

He said that the issue of odor that sometimes emanates from the plant has been discussed with city officials in Bertram over time, and he said it came up in the discussion at the June 10 Bertram council meeting.

'Everybody's going to focus on … wastewater treatment plants do occasionally have odors …

,” he said. 'I've tried to be very clear that we are in the business of odor control. And we do expend a lot of effort on that.”

Hershner said treatment plants have a wide variety of processes, some of which do not involve odor. So some eventual expansion of the plant into the 91 acres now in Bertram doesn't mean it would be part of the plant that could give off some odor, he said.

'Our business, like so many others, is changing constantly,” Hershner said. 'And I have no idea what wastewater treatment is going to look like in 20 years, 30 years, 50 years. But it may require some footprint, and it seemed like a good idea to invest in that for future generations.”

As a city department director, Hershner also is a city of Cedar Rapids representative on the board of the Solid Waste Agency. He said the agency is sending a letter to Bertram city officials to say that the agency has no plans to build a compost facility or any other facility on or around the city's wastewater treatment plant.

Linn County Supervisor Brent Oleson, current chairman of the Solid Waste Agency board, said Wednesday that he been part of the creation of the agency's master plan for its Site 1 landfill, known as Mount Trashmore, where the agency's current compost operation is located.

The master plan, Oleson said, calls for the compost operation to stay put and operate at the base of the landfill. It will serve as a working educational venue as the agency reclaims the closed landfill for recreational and outdoor uses.

'We have two distinct visions for that facility,” he said of the Mount Trashmore site, just down the Cedar River from Czech Village 'One is a working facility for composting and wood chipping to sit alongside an area we're reclaiming for the environment.

'When people visit to go to the top of Mount Trashmore on a BMX trail or whatever, it's still going to be a working operation down below.”

Les Beck, Linn County's director of planning and development, on Wednesday said the state of Iowa's process for a city to de-annex property is simple and straightforward if the property owner and the city agree to the action.

It doesn't happen if one or the other rejects the idea, he said.

Beck said a subdivision in Palo in recent years succeeded in moving into unincorporated Linn County after the subdivision and city disagreed over utility hookup charges.

Asked what Bertram has to gain by de-annexing the Ditch acreage, Cedar Rapids's Hershner said Cedar Rapids has offered to see how it might help Bertram. Bertram officials have asked what it would take for Bertram to hook into Cedar Rapids's wastewater plant just to the west but uphill from Bertram, he said.

'I think we are willing to work with them on that matter,” Hershner said.

He said it would require Bertram to invest some money to set up a sewer system before its wastewater then could be pumped up to the Cedar Rapids treatment plant.

Cedar Rapids has such an arrangement with the city of Palo, he said.