Village Board reaches higher levels of transparency

By Shelby R. Farrell
Reporter
POPLAR GROVE –The Village of Poplar Grove Board of Trustees showed a new level of transparency while meeting over the results of an Environmental Protection Agency engineering evaluation.
The EPA evaluates the village every three years, but when Village Administrator Diana Dykstra started her report over the results, she said the board had never seen or heard about the engineering evaluation before.
“This has happened for many years, and you’re supposed to as a board review this, and I’ve been told that you guys have never seen these types of things,” she said. “You should have gotten the opportunity to review them at the board level.”
While the board getting to review the evaluation was new this year, Dykstra said the results were “no different.” The results outlines deficiencies that Dykstra said could be considered as non-violations, and it included a list of things the village could do to meet those requirements.
Dykstra broke the list down into four main updates that the village needs to make: updating the Cross Connection Control Ordinance, entering a private water/waste water treatment contract with Midwest Contract Operations, updating the Emergency Management Plan and a new coliform distribution sampling site plan. The village also has plans to continue updating energy meters and “documenting the valve exercises,” according to Dykstra’s plan.
She said the meters are being replaced on a regular basis, but there are still about 1,200 meters in the village that need updated. The village also entered an agreement with Midwest Contract Operations at the Oct. 12 meeting. The company will locate, inspect and record the conditions of all of the sanitary manholes in the village for no more than $5,000. At that meeting, the board also approved the resolution to the Cross-Connection Control Ordinance according to the EPA’s requirements.
“Our workload doesn’t end here,” Dykstra said. “Now we actually have to implement all of these things that we say we’re gonna do.”