Thrasher Presents New Plans at Jan. 9 PSD Meeting

Ken Moran of Thrasher Engineering presented a 76 page PowerPoint presentation (10MB, be patient - it loads slow) that detailed locations and costs of 4 plant designs. These are:

Site #5 - SBR Plant (1.5 MMGPD) behind Beckwith Lumber - which contrary to popular belief and the decision made at the July PSD meeting when Site #7 was selected - the Beckwith Site is back.

Site #7 - SBR Plant (1.5 MMGPD) along Snowshoe Drive near the "Forever Wild" sign.

Site #9 - New Alternative - a new Membrane Biological Reactor (MBR) Plant (1.0 MMGPD) with located at Silver Creek and discharging into Shavers Fork. This is the proposal Eight Rivers Safe Development has advocated due to minimum impact to the environment and reduction of inter-basin water transfer from the Shavers Fork to the Elk River watershed.

Site # 10 - New Alternative - combination of a lower capacity plant at Site #7 a new SBR w/membrane filtration plant at Silver Creek.

The PSD will take public comment on these alternatives at a Jan 15, 2009 meeting - see next News Item.

Eight Rivers Safe Development, Inc. will provide written input / comment on these proposals.

It is disappointing that this analysis emphasizes capital and operating/maintenance cost as the key criteria. The accuracy of the cost estimates are +/- 25% - many options are within $1-2MM of each other which taken within in the context of a $30MM project and the cost estimate accuracy the alternatives should be considered essentially equivalent.

No quantitative assessment of the risk or impact on the environment by each option is included in the analysis.