Marshall Municipal Utilities Board of Public Works met Tuesday, April 1, to hear from General Manager Kyle Gibbs why MMU received a letter of warning from Department of Natural Resources Northwest Regional Office in Macon.

MMU received a letter of warning regarding the January report required by the discharge permit. Gibbs said the reason is because MMU does not report effluent flows for the month. Gibbs said the person from DNR is relatively new and evidently does not understand that a number of wastewater plants, including MMU, do not monitor effluent flow volume but rather the influent volume.

The wastewater design standards in the regulation says to monitor influent or effluent. Generally, when it comes to volume, what comes into a plant goes out, usually the same day. The DNR person acknowledged this fact but still said, "well, your permit says to report effluent," according to department report handed out at the board meeting. The advice given was to simply note the flow as effluent and everything would be fine.

According to the report by Environmental Services Department, that is a falsification of a public record and something that can get an operator's certificate revoked, fines imposed and even jail time for the person signing the monthly report.

The board report stated that Environmental Services Director Ginny Ismay spoke with the head of the Water Protection Program in Jefferson City about this. He is going to speak with the regional office director and one of them is to get back to MMU.

Ismay reported in her department report that the DNR staff person had only been at the regional office for about a month when that person issued the letter of warning. The regional director signed the letter, but with the number of letters that person has to sing in a month's time, they have to rely on the staff being properly trained and supervised and the information in the letter being accurate and a proper interpretation.

The probationary period for DNR employees is six months.

In other business, the board approved some modifications to the current Internet service offerings in order to provide more value.

MMU is increasing the speed and decreasing the rate. Wireless customers will stay at $30.

Theoretical maximum speed of the radios is close to two millions of bits per second (Mbps), but most customers will achieve much less because of signal strength and distance.

MMU has the service broken into three tiers. The first tier currently is 1.5 Mbps for $30, second tier is 3.0 Mbps for $70 and third tier is 4.5 Mbps for $105. The new rates passed at the meeting will be first tier of 3.0 Mbps for $30, second tier of 6.0 Mbps for $60 and third tier for 9.0 Mbps for $90.

According to Administrative Services Director Ken Gieringer, 85 percent of MMU's customers are at tier one.

With this change, the immediate effect would be about a $200 decrease in revenue and a $200 increase in expenses.

These negative effects should be offset by increased customer count, Gieringer said.

In addition to the changes, MMU's previous rates had a provision for dedicated bandwidth.

Gieringer said MMU would like to change that to a negotiated rate. Currently, MMU is not directly providing dedicated bandwidth for any MMU customers.

The next board meeting will be Tuesday, April 15, at 8:30 a.m.

Contact Rachel Harper at marshallcity@socket.net