By William A. Weathers
The Cincinnati Enquirer

ALEXANDRIA - More than 40 speakers at a Kentucky Division of Water public hearing Thursday night generally agreed that a proposed $75 million waste treatment plant is desperately needed.

"I've seen things overflow," Alexandria resident Earl Woeste said while voicing support for the new facility. "The old plant doesn't work."

But many of those who spoke during the standing room-only, three-hour hearing at the Campbell County Courthouse in Alexandria - including David Rager, director of the Greater Cincinnati Water Works and Cincinnati Health Commissioner Dr. Malcolm Adcock - voiced opposition to plans for the proposed facility. It would discharge treated wastewater into the Ohio River at 11 miles upriver from where Cincinnati get its drinking water.

The Division of Water hearing was held to get public comments on a discharge permit for the treatment plant. Bruce Scott, manager of permit programs for the division of water, said a decision on the permit request will be made "hopefully within a 90-day period."

The proposed Eastern Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant is being built because the existing Alexandria Wastewater Treatment Plant cannot handle large amounts of storm water that gets in through deteriorating infrastructure and causes overflows during rain events.

In 1996, the division of water placed a moratorium on new hookups to the Alexandria sanitary sewer system, which has stymied new development in the area.

Rager and Adcock objected to the location of the proposed discharge point because of fears of parasites and other contaminants getting into Cincinnati's water intake downstream.

Rager said the Alexandria plant discharge point should be "downriver at least one-quarter mile from the Greater Cincinanti Water Works, Northern Kentucky Water District, and City of Newport Water intakes."

Jeffrey A. Eger, general manager of Sanitation District No.1 of Campbell and Kenton Counties, said the Cincinnati Water Works "has ignored science, facts and truth to contest one of Northern Kentucky's much needed wastewater treatment plants."

In Kentucky, state regulations require wastewater discharges be a minimum of five miles above the nearest drinking water intake, and the new plant be equipped to treat wastewater with ultraviolet light, a proven killer of parasites.

To move the water discharged point downstream as Cincinnati officials suggest would cost an additional $42 million, Eger said.

E-mail bweathers@enquirer.com