Warrenton aldermen voted Tuesday night to allow the Warren County Commission to proceed with having a bar screen system installed, a decision that should end a dispute between the two regarding what type of sewer pretreatment improvements needed to be made to block items from entering the city’s system. The county’s preferred pretreatment system will feature a bar screen that will block and catch items that have been flushed down toilets in the courthouse, particularly from the jail facility. The items will then be removed by a county maintenance employee. The pretreatment project has been designed to allow for a grinder to be installed at a future time if the bar screen system fails to be an effective solution. The approval was reached after a few modifications were made to the initial design proposed by Shafer, Kline and Warren, the engineering firm representing the county. As part of the pretreatment plan, a high level float will be included and will provide notification to designated city staff along with a visual and audible alarm whenever the level in the manhole reaches a point of overflow. The city also will be allowed to make visual inspections for 60 days after the project is completed to ensure that the pretreatment system is functioning properly. Aldermen voted unanimously to follow the recommendation of Public Works Director Guy Gevers to approve the pretreatment design.  “I appreciate your work on this Guy and hopefully this will resolve the problems,” Mayor Greg Costello commented. Until the sewer pretreatment improvements are installed, the city will continue to clean the manhole that services the courthouse facility on a daily basis and the cleaning charges will be added to the county’s monthly sewer bill. During Tuesday night’s meeting, 11 photographs taken Monday were reviewed by board members showing a wide assortment of items that have been removed from the manhole over the past three weeks by city crews. Some of the trash that was caught by a rake and removed by the city’s vacuum truck included clothing, potato chip bags, toothbrushes, toothpaste containers and food wrappers. “If you would (multiply) that by how many days, years, that is quite a bit going into our lift station,” Gevers told the board. The two entities have been in a dispute on how to prevent clothing and other items from entering the city’s sewer system. In February, city workers discovered a jail jumpsuit and other garbage that apparently had been stuffed down toilets by inmates at the county jail and blocked the city’s sewer main. The city requested the sewer pretreatment improvements since every manhole overflow must be reported as a violation to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and worries that similar incidents could cause damage to the sewer system. Under city codes, it’s unlawful for any type of garbage to be discharged into the city’s sewer system. Now that a design is agreed upon, the county commission should be able to proceed with publishing a legal notice advertising the project, a process that will last for three weeks. The project should then be awarded soon after. Commissioners balked at installing a grinder system — the city’s preferred pretreatment method — because they believe the less expensive bar system is a reliable solution. While the city felt it had the authority to impose specific sewer pretreatment requirements, such as the grinder, commissioners disagreed. They said the city’s code book did not include any regulations requiring a grinder to be installed. In August, frustrated by the lack of response and communication from the county, the city threatened to cut off water and sewer service to the courthouse if the county did not make its preferred sewer pretreatment improvements by Oct. 12, the original deadline set by the city six months earlier. In a closed session meeting Oct. 4, aldermen voted to extend the deadline after receiving a letter from Sheriff Kevin Harrison expressing concerns about disrupting the operations of the jail and other possible issues. If service was shut off, that would have forced Harrison to move around 100 inmates to nearby jails, a costly endeavor. In the same meeting, aldermen chose not to take any action on a request from the commission for a 60-day extension because the county failed to recognize the city’s authority to impose specific sewer pretreatment requirements.