By Jim Reece - The Sutter Creek City Council on Monday approved a 50-50 split of costs and benefits improvements at the city’s wastewater treatment system. The city already has undertaken the improvements, which were emergency repairs implemented to keep the city from violating its permits with the state. The improvements cost 1.5 million and the city will be reimbursed for up to 800,000 dollars by the Amador Water Agency. City Manager Rob Duke said the repairs were necessitated by the loss of capacity in the water treatment system, brought on by a number of issues. One was a decrease in oxygen levels in the wastewater system, which is detrimental to the breakdown of solids. Duke said city staff was “asleep at the wheel.” He said it took 6 months of testing to find the root of the violations. The city thought that AWA’s customers on Sutter Hill were the cause of high “suspended solids” in the wastewater, but then city customer sources also showed high solid counts. The emergency repairs and volume expansion totaled approximately 800,000 each for the city and for the AWA. The improvements will increase the city system’s daily treatment capacity back to 480,000 gallons per day, Duke said, and should add more capacity, which engineers expected to be about 120,000 gallons per day more than the 480,000 GPD. That extra capacity will also be split 50-50 between the city and the AWA. Councilmen Pat Crosby and Tim Murphy, members of the wastewater subcommittee with the AWA, said work with the water agency on solutions was a good environment, with positive results. Duke said the city and AWA were working on “best practices” for their systems and also working on reduction of customers putting fat, oil and grease in the wastewater stream. The council approved the payment terms 4-0.