Prentice Wastewater Plant Faces Rising Costs and Failing Equipment as Village Grapples With Infrastructure Crunch
The Village of Prentice, a community of roughly 600 residents in southern Price County, is confronting a pair of costly problems at its wastewater treatment plant that together threaten to strain an already stretched municipal budget. A new state permit has added $25,000 in annual testing costs, while aging weirs at the treatment facility are deteriorating and will need replacement. The issues arrive alongside separate water main and sewer projects across the village that together represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in infrastructure spending.
New DNR Permit Drives Up Testing Costs
At its January 12, 2026, board meeting, the Village of Prentice reviewed the consequences of a newly issued Wisconsin Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or WPDES, permit from the Department of Natural Resources. The revised permit expanded the number of testing requirements the village must meet at its wastewater treatment plant, adding an estimated $25,000 per year in laboratory and compliance costs.
WPDES permits, issued under the federal Clean Water Act and state statute, regulate the discharge of pollutants into Wisconsin waters. Each permit carries a five-year term and specifies the monitoring requirements, reporting obligations, and compliance schedules for the facility it covers. The DNR updates permit terms when facilities are re-evaluated or when water quality standards change, and municipalities must absorb the cost of whatever testing the new permit mandates.
For a village of Prentice’s size, $25,000 in additional annual costs is not a marginal line item. The village’s entire operating budget relies on a narrow property tax base, utility fees, and limited state aid. The board discussed having a representative identified as Dale petition the DNR to remove the extra testing requirements, arguing that the additional monitoring may not be justified for a facility of the village’s scale. Whether that petition will succeed remains unclear.
Failing Weirs Add to the Burden
Two months later, at the March 9, 2026, board meeting, the village identified a second problem at the treatment plant. The weirs, which are the metal or concrete structures that control the flow of wastewater through treatment basins, were reported to be falling apart. The board authorized contacting August Winters, a firm known for wastewater treatment equipment, to pursue replacement.
Weirs are a critical component of any wastewater treatment system. They distribute flow evenly across treatment basins and help control how long wastewater remains in each stage of the treatment process. When weirs fail, the treatment process becomes less efficient, and the risk of noncompliance with discharge limits increases. For a facility already operating under a stricter permit, failing weirs compound the pressure on the village to invest in its plant or face potential enforcement action from the state.
The cost of weir replacement has not yet been publicly disclosed, but similar projects at small municipal plants in Wisconsin have ranged from tens of thousands to over $100,000 depending on the extent of the damage and the type of weir system installed.
A Broader Infrastructure Crisis
The wastewater plant problems are not isolated. Prentice has been dealing with aging infrastructure across multiple fronts throughout 2026. At its February 9 meeting, the village board opened bids for the Railroad Street water main project, receiving eight proposals. The lowest bid came from JGJ Dirt LLC at $699,813.62, with a 60-day completion window. That single project represents a cost greater than the village’s annual wastewater testing increase multiplied over nearly three decades.
In April, the board addressed repeated water main breaks and sewer issues on Apple Street and Ash Street. The village approved a proposal from Ayres Associates, an engineering firm, and began pursuing funding through the Wisconsin Safe Drinking Water Loan Program and the Clean Water Fund, two state programs that provide low-interest loans and principal forgiveness to municipalities for water infrastructure projects. By June, the street project was underway, with completion expected in early August.
Taken together, the water main work, sewer repairs, wastewater permit costs, and weir replacement form a pattern that is familiar to small communities across rural Wisconsin. Decades-old infrastructure is reaching the end of its useful life, and the cost of replacement falls on a tax base too small to absorb it without state or federal assistance.
The Funding Puzzle
Prentice is pursuing state financial assistance through two primary channels. The Safe Drinking Water Loan Program, administered by the DNR, provides loans and principal forgiveness for projects that address drinking water contamination, lead service line replacement, and water system infrastructure improvements. The Clean Water Fund, also administered through the DNR, supports wastewater treatment and water quality projects, including the kind of treatment plant upgrades Prentice now needs.
Both programs are competitive. Municipalities must apply, demonstrate financial need, and often wait through lengthy review cycles before funds are disbursed. For small villages with limited administrative capacity, the application process itself can be a barrier. Prentice’s decision to hire Ayres Associates to manage the funding pursuit reflects a common strategy among small Wisconsin communities: contract the engineering and grant-writing expertise that the village cannot maintain in-house.
Even with state assistance, the village will likely shoulder a portion of the costs through local borrowing or utility rate increases. Residents of Prentice already face water and electricity costs that rank among the highest in Wisconsin on a percentage-of-income basis, a problem documented in Price County Fun’s coverage of utility affordability in the region.
Rural Wisconsin’s Infrastructure Squeeze
Prentice’s situation mirrors a statewide and national problem. The American Society of Civil Engineers has repeatedly identified Wisconsin’s wastewater and drinking water infrastructure as underfunded. Small communities face the same regulatory requirements as larger cities but without the economies of scale that make per-household costs manageable. A treatment plant serving 600 residents must meet the same discharge standards as one serving 60,000, but the fixed costs of compliance, laboratory testing, engineering studies, and equipment replacement are spread across far fewer ratepayers.
The Wisconsin DNR maintains individual WPDES permits for more than 600 municipal wastewater facilities across the state. Many of those facilities were built in the 1960s and 1970s with federal grants that are no longer available at the same scale. As those plants age, communities like Prentice are left to fund replacement and upgrades through a patchwork of state loans, local borrowing, and rate increases.
The federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed in 2021, directed additional funding to state revolving funds for water infrastructure, but the demand for that funding far exceeds the supply. Wisconsin communities submit more project applications than the state can finance in any given year, leaving many villages to prioritize the most urgent repairs while deferring others.
An Ongoing Story
The Prentice wastewater treatment plant situation remains active. The village board continues to meet monthly, and the DNR permit petition is still pending. The weir replacement process with August Winters is in its early stages. County-level committees have discussed related permit and DNR matters in recent meetings, though those discussions have not yet produced specific actions targeting the Prentice facility.
Price County Fun will continue to track this story through village board meetings and county committee updates. A full timeline of events is available on the Prentice Wastewater Treatment Plant Issues saga page. For broader context on utility costs in the region, see Why Price County Pays More for Water and Electricity Than Almost Anywhere in Wisconsin. Additional background on regional infrastructure challenges is available in the Price County Infrastructure Analysis.
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Sources
- Village of Prentice Board meeting, January 12, 2026
- Village of Prentice Board meeting, March 9, 2026
- Village of Prentice Board meeting, February 9, 2026
- Village of Prentice Board meeting, April 9, 2026
- Village of Prentice Board meeting, June 8, 2026
- Wisconsin DNR, WPDES Permits program (dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/Wastewater/Permits.html)
- Wisconsin DNR, Safe Drinking Water Loan Program and Clean Water Fund
- American Society of Civil Engineers, Infrastructure Report Card
- U.S. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, 2021