SIDNEY – In the final special meeting before a referendum Tuesday, Sidney officials called in a representative of Champaign County Public Health to help them make the case for a new sanitary sewer system.

Champaign-Urbana Public Health District Environmental Health Coordinator Jeff Blackford last week said the conventional systems most Sidney residents are using have a life expectancy of 15 to 30 years.

"What ends up happening is effluent bubbles up to the ground surface or backs up into the house," he said.

Other problems come from systems that illegally combine with a storm sewer system.

Blackford told Sidney residents that Illinois is the only state that has not yet complied with the Clean Water Act of 1972. Most states don't allow individual septic systems or require permits for them.

A state law went into effect Jan. 1 prohibiting installation of surface discharging septic systems without a permit issued by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. The permit requires a yearly inspection, proof of a maintenance agreement for the system and yearly representative grab sampling. Violations must be corrected within 60 days or sampling and inspection will have to be done every 30 days until corrected.

The cost of the permit is $300 to $500 a year if no problems are found, Blackford said. In Ohio, the most recent state to enact such regulations, 20 to 60 percent of septic systems did not meet standards, and those numbers go up for older units.

"It's another couple hundred dollars every time you have to sample," Blackford said. "We strongly support and endorse every community to explore a municipal sewer option."

The federal and state EPAs have not reached an agreement on effluent limits. "U.S. EPA is pushing for zero discharge, but IEPA believes, looking at the soils in the southern part of the state, zero discharge is not achievable," Blackford said.

The referendum question asks whether to allow Sidney to take out a $10.2 million loan for the sewer system. Without grant funds, the user charge will be $109 a month; with federal stimulus money or grants it could be $69 a month.

Trustees have passed a resolution stating that if the village receives no grants, donations or low-interest loans, the sewer project will not be pursued.

"There's not a soul in this community that would want to pay $109 per month," Village President John Finn said.

The 2000 Census showed Sidney's median household income was $55,000 a year, making it ineligible for need-based grant funding, so trustees are going door-to-door with an income survey they hope will dispute that. The campaign also lets residents ask questions about information packets the village mailed to all households.

Trustees Mark Catron and Troy Roberts went to 86 homes on a recent day.

"We tried to dispel rumors and myths," Roberts said.