The Libby City Council on July 5 authorized the application for a $15,000 grant so the city can take the first step toward improving its wastewater treatment and collection system.

The grant is part of the Montana Department of Commerce’s Treasure State Endowment Program. If the city is awarded the money, it will be matched with $15,000 from the city’s existing capital improvement cash reserves to fund a preliminary engineering report.

The grant application outlines a number of issues the city has found in its collection system and wastewater treatment plant that it would like to address.

At the Montana Avenue lift station, for example, the pumps are more than 20 years old and in need of replacement and the station has no backup power. The City Hall lift station has a submersible pump and septic tank that are “difficult and unsafe to enter” and electrical components that “are not up to code.” And a preliminary engineering report conducted in 2010 noted that some of the city’s gravity sewer mains have slight slopes that cause solids to back up.

At the wastewater treatment plant, the application states that the disinfection system does not comply with state E. coli limits and the influent pump station, the bar screens and the grit chambers all have reached the end of their useful lives.

Altogether the components the preliminary engineering report will evaluate exist throughout the city, the application states.

TD&H Engineering, with offices throughout Montana and in neighboring states, has been chosen to produce the preliminary engineering report. City Administrator Jim Hammons told the City Council a contract with the firm still needs to be negotiated.

According to the grant application, the city estimates work on the report will begin in August and end in January 2018.