After a long wait, the city of Truesdale has been granted $30,000 to help the city evaluate new options for wastewater treatment.

The grant funding comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development agency. It comes as Truesdale has spent more than a year pondering new avenues for sewage treatment. Truesdale’s current treatment provider, the city of Warrenton, is refusing any expansion of Truesdale’s sewer network until the Warrenton treatment plant is upgraded in 2027. That has effectively put a block on new development in Truesdale.

Truesdale officials hope the USDA-funded sewer study will identify new possibilities for sewage that will allow the city to continue growing, whether that’s through an independent treatment plant or a new, outside provider.

City Administrator MaryLou Rainwater said the city is grateful to USDA Rural Development for choosing to fund the study.

“The city feels very blessed, and Rural Development has been very helpful to the city,” said City Administrator MaryLou Rainwater. “With their help, we can do this study and get the best information available so the board (of aldermen) can make a wise decision.”

Truesdale has contracted engineering firm Klingner & Associates to conduct the sewer study. City officials previously commented that the firm has a history of work with smaller communities that need affordable public services.

Rainwater said engineers have already been provided with mapping data for the city’s sewers to begin their study. One of the complicating factors they’ll have to navigate is that some of the sewer lines in Truesdale jointly serve city of Warrenton customers as well, Rainwater added.

She said a portion of the study will provide information by August that Warrenton has requested as the current provider. But the complete study will take an undetermined amount of time because much of it is dependent on weather.

“To do a flow study (for example), they have to have a period of dry time and a period of wet time with rain,” Rainwater explained. That part of the study is necessary to determine how much water runoff is infiltrating the sewer system.

The USDA Rural Development program providing funding for the sewer study is called Special Evaluation Assistance for Rural Communities and Households (SEARCH). A USDA spokesperson said the program is designed to help small, “financially distressed” rural communities with engineering services for water and waste disposal projects.

For Truesdale, that service will be a preliminary engineering report and environmental study, which will evaluate the cost and feasibility for a new sewage plant, connection to an outside provider, and/or improvements to the existing network. The goal of the study is to create a plan to accommodate current and new sewage customers in Truesdale.

“The completed preliminary engineering report will allow the city to thoroughly evaluate all potential options for the best, most cost-efficient and effective wastewater treatment option for its citizens,” the USDA spokesperson said.

The $30,000 grant for the study will be disbursed after the sewer study is complete. Klingner & Associates has a year to complete the sewer study, during which Truesdale will pay the invoices for the project, Rainwater explained. The city will then be reimbursed for its costs once the study is done.