Paul Bryant Photo Chandler officials say it could take up to $500,000 to add a second clarifier similar to this 20-year-old unit at the Chandler Wastewater Treatment Plant near Noonday Road. CHANDLER - An expansion at the city's wastewater treatment plant could cost half a million dollars, and officials are mulling whether to use bonds, certificates of obligation or other revenue sources to finance the project, City Administrator Jim Moffeit said.

"The clarifier has to run 24 hours a day, so we don't have any way to do maintenance on it. It's not a real issue for the first 10 to 12 years of its life, but as it gets older it does require maintenance and upgrades. "

The plant off Noonday Road operates with a clarifier, oxidation ditch, screener, chlorine-contact chamber, and drying bed. Moffeit said the city wants to add a second clarifier so that one can continue to run while work is performed on the other.

"It would allow us to have some down time on one clarifier or the other," he said. "So, we're seeing what it would take to build a second clarifier and increase capacity on the oxidation ditch."

The plant is permitted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to treat 500,000 gallons of waste water per day.

"This is our second facility, " Moffeit said. "I think this one was built in the 1980s, and it's still kind of state-of-the-art stuff. (Officials) from other places always want to come look at how this one works."

Chandler City Council member Gene Giger said he would vote for adding another clarifier.

"I know what we have, and I know it's old," he said. "If it breaks, we're in heck of a shape. I am in favor of doing what we need to do to put that second one in so we can use it and bring this other one up to date. I don't like anything where we don't have a backup."

Chandler's wastewater treatment plant relies primarily on gravity-force sewer mains to deliver waste. In areas where that is not possible, five lift stations pump waste to the plant. Once waste water is treated through a four-step process, the clean water is redistributed into Lake Palestine.

Everette Griffith Jr. & Associates of Lufkin has been contracted by the city to study the feasibility of adding a second clarifier at the site.

Utilities Superintendent Stanley McCurley could not be reached.