One business sending giant portion of city’s waste to treatment plant

State will be mandating chemical levels in near future

So far, an examination of the amount of phosphorous going to the La Crosse sewage treatment plant shows one business responsible for the lion’s share of the chemical. 

City Brewery represents 17 percent of the city’s phosphorus levels.

The water utility is studying phosphorous because, in less than 10 years, a state mandate will restrict output of the chemical to a tiny fraction of what it is now.

Early estimates on cost for those restrictions were tens of millions of dollars. New technologies, says La Crosse water utility manager Mark Johnson, will continue to drive that cost down as the deadline to adhere to the mandates gets closer.

Johnson says City Brewery is one of the businesses that the utility will work with ahead of those stiff, new state regulations.

“Part of the end process will be to try to work with these industries and other contributors,” he said, “so we can reduce what’s coming from these industries and other sources.

“They know that part of this end process will be trying to address, ‘What can we do?'” 

La Crosse is in the early stages of that study to determine from where most of the chemical element comes.