Tell Genoa Township Trustees to vote NO on the Sewer Bond!

To anyone reading this blog living in Oak Point, Tri Lakes or North Shore (in Genoa Township) who are served by the Oak Point wastewater treatment plant, tell your township trustees to vote NO on the sewer bond.  The bond will stick us with a 5 million dollar five mile pipeline to the Genoa / Oceola treatment plant - a cost of $3571 per household for the 1,400 households served by the Oak Point plant. The bond will likely be voted on in late January or early February by the Board.

Township officials are pushing this bond and pipeline because groundwater below the Oak Point plant is being contaminated by salt from the water softeners of households connected to the plant.  The Plant does not treat for salt, but lets it seep in settling ponds into the ground and groundwater.  By connecting to the Genoa Oceola plant 5 miles away this salty water is directed there.  The Genoa Oceola plant then discharges into surface water, namely the Shiawassee River system.

There is a better and potentially cheaper alternative.  Ban the salt.  Hamburg Township has already successfully done so, and we can to.  Hamburg Township allows the use of potassium chloride or any of a number of systems that use no salt or potassium chloride (thus saving the cost of buying salt or potassium chloride). These no salt systems can cost less than the $3571per household the bond issue costs (and you need never buy salt or potassium chloride again).

Plus, many folks like myself have medical conditions like high blood pressure so we need to restrict salt in our diets. ( Our household does not use a softener at all, and this method works too.  We filter our drinking water with a Brita - other filters are available for greater cost. We add washing soda to water for laundry and dishwater to soften it.) 

And, in the future environmental laws may ban discharge of salty water (brine from water softeners)
into surface water.  This is already the case in the Los Angeles County Sanitation District.  Google their web site and read the facts.

The future belongs to the no salt alternatives.

(By the way, the cheapest place to buy potassium chloride is a Costco at $19 per bag. Also, though potassium chloride prices spiked several years ago they have declined since and should continue to decline).

Jim Delcamp
former candidate for Genoa Township Trustee