Cedar Creek resident William (Bill) Dubard speaks to the Fairfield Joint Water and Sewer Authority during a public hearing to receive public comments regarding the construction of a wastewater treatment plant in Fairfield County with a planned discharge of treated effluent into Big Cedar Creek that runs through both Fairfield and Richland Counties. | Barbara Ball
WINNSBORO – After spending more than a month battling
Fairfield County’s proposal to build a wastewater treatment plant in the
vicinity of Syrup Mill and Broom Mill Roads, Center Creek and Cedar Creek
residents were invited to express their concerns to the Fairfield County Joint
Water and Sewer Authority Commission Tuesday evening in Fairfield county
council chambers.
While the public notice of the meeting stated that anyone
who desired could speak to the issue, only six of the capacity crowd addressed
council. The speakers mostly agreed that they want Fairfield County to grow and
prosper. They were generally divided, however, in their focus based on where
they live.
Center Creek residents generally protested the location of
the county’s planned wastewater treatment plant in proximity to their homes,
saying they would be plagued by the smell, noise and unsightliness of the
plant. They said they didn’t trust the Department of Health and Environment
Control (DHEC) to monitor and regulate the wastewater treatment process, and
they want the county to find another location further from their homes.
Cedar Creek residents protested the county’s plan to
discharge the treated effluent into Big Cedar Creek which runs past or near
their homes and properties. They said they fear it will contaminate the creek,
their water wells and their lands.
The meeting was opened by Commission Chairman Roger Gaddy,
Mayor of Winnsboro, who turned the program over to Chris Clausen, the county’s
community development director, who explained the county’s need for
infrastructure to help stem the loss of population and bring economic
development to the county.
“The Central Midlands Council of Governments’ (CMCOG)
population projection two years ago was really alarming. The number it
projected for the County by 2050 was only 26,925 people, only a 2,500 increase
in population over the next 30 years,” Clausen said. “That is not sustainable
for this county. So we need to look at how can we grow and develop this
county.”
Clausen said the biggest impediment to growth is the lack of
utility infrastructure in the county, particularly wastewater, thus the need to
find a suitable site for a wastewater treatment plant to encourage and
accommodate not only industrial growth but residential growth as well.
To his point, Clausen and the county’s Economic Development
Director Ty Davenport presented data affirming the safety, reliability and “the
highest level of treatment standards produced by the Membrane Bio-Reactor (MBR)
wastewater treatment process” proposed at the Syrup Mill Road site. That data
also included other information and charts explaining why the county cannot
afford another $40 million to take the effluent to the Broad River, the ideal
site from all perspectives in the room. Davenport said the County is still
looking at five different sites, to include the Syrup Mill/Broom Mill Site.
Following executive session during the Monday night county
council meeting, council voted to authorize County Administrator Jason Taylor
to pursue negotiations for a site other than the Syrup Mill site.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, however, Center Creek and Cedar
Creek residents, praised the county’s efforts to find other sites for both the
treatment facility and the effluent discharge, but made it clear they were not backing
down.
Some residents offered to help the county find the funding
to take the effluent to the Broad.
“I do think this is a tremendous opportunity for the county
to be set up for success in the future regarding residential, commercial and
industrial growth. However, I’m adamantly opposed to the wastewater going into
Cedar Creek, and I am committed to working with the county to seek additional
funding to carry this to the Broad River,” Cedar Creek resident Lynn Beckham
Robertson told the Commissioners. “There are other options.”
CEDAR CREEK – About a hundred residents of the northeast
section of Blythewood 29016 and the southern part of Fairfield County, many of
whom live along Cedar Creek, met in the Cedar Creek Community Center Sunday
afternoon to discuss a wastewater treatment plant Fairfield County Council has
proposed to locate on a 50-acre property on Syrup Mill and Broom Mill
Roads. The wastewater from that plant is
proposed to be discharged into Cedar Creek.
Fairfield County officials, Administrator Jason Taylor,
Planning Director Chris Clausen and Economic Development Director Ty Davenport
fielded questions.
Fairfield County officials answer questions from Cedar Creek Community residents. | Barbara Ball
The first sore spot brought up by meeting organizers as well
as some in the audience was the feeling that information about the proposed
site had been kept secret by the county and not made public.
“I didn’t know about this until about a week ago.” Shawn
Goff, one of the organizers, told the audience on Jan. 19. “I had no idea this
is coming,” Goff said.
“You understand why we feel blindsided about this,” Cedar
Creek resident Jim Young added. “I didn’t hear about it until a week ago.”
An unidentified woman spoke up to say Fairfield County
residents also didn’t know about the proposed site.
The information about the site location was made public
during a council committee meeting two months earlier on Nov. 11, 2019.
The Voice reported the proposed location on Syrup Mill Road in a front page story on Dec. 5, titled ‘Water Authority Moving Forward.’ The story read, in part, “At an Administrative and Finance committee meeting, also held Nov. 11, county officials said the property being targeted is located off Syrup Mill Road near Big Cedar Creek.”
“We rarely disclose these things until we’re well into the
process with an economic development project,” Taylor said. “We usually give a
code name [until a contract is signed].”
“We found a property, but we weren’t going to announce, ‘Hey
we’re looking at property along Cedar Creek’, because if we do that, the costs
will go up,” Fairfield County Economic Director Ty Davenport said. “Once we put
the property under contract, it was announced at a public meeting.”
Another concern of many at the meeting was whether the
wastewater that would be discharged into the creek would contaminate it.
Both Goff and the county officials disclosed that the creek
is already receiving wastewater from the Ridgeway wastewater plant that is
currently in violation for discharging contaminants into the creek.
Taylor said the Ridgeway plant cannot be modernized. He said
if the county builds a wastewater plant, it could take on the Ridgeway
discharge, effectively cleaning up the creek instead of contaminating it.
John Culbreth, with Thomas and Hutton engineering
consultants, said at the Jan. 13 council meeting that the wastewater discharged
from the Syrup Mill Road facility would be processed by a state-of-the-art
treatment system – a membrane bioreactor (MBR) system – that would not
contaminate the creek. He said it is an advanced level of treatment that would
discharge water of near drinking water quality. He said that discharge is used
to irrigate golf courses and crops and for other uses.
Taylor reiterated Sunday that the discharge would not
pollute the creek. Asked if he would let his children swim in it, he said he
would.
Goff, who lives on Cedar Creek and opposes the discharge
into the creek, agreed that the MBR technology, from his research, is the best
of the best.
“If you have to have one, this is the one you want,” Goff
said. “I can’t tell you that it’s the devil, because it’s the most advanced
wastewater treatment facility that’s available. There are no open pools. It’s
all contained and it has a small footprint, about seven acres. Anyone can
Google and do the research. I was trying my darndest to find some piece of bad
press or something that has happened at one of these plants, and I can’t,” Goff
said. “They say the creek will be cleaner than it is now.”
“Membrane technology is a very clean technology, but it is
highly intensive from a maintenance standpoint,” an unidentified man from the
audience said. “And you’re turning over a very complex treatment facility to
who? To Fairfield County?”
The audience laughed.
Taylor said the county would manage the treatment facility.
Asked if the county had anyone who had experience managing wastewater treatment
plants, Taylor said it does, that he had successfully operated one in Jasper
County for 13 years.
Center Creek resident David Valentine, a civil engineer,
asked why the county is rushing the wastewater treatment facility through and
would the county be willing to put the project on hold for a period of time so
citizens could do the due diligence.
“We are open to looking at other options without question,”
Taylor said. “But I will say it’s not been rushed from our side. I’ve been
working on it for three years and the county’s been working on it since 1997,”
he said. “We have been losing population and jobs. We need to plan for jobs and
to reverse population.”
Taylor said hooking into Columbia is too costly and that
Columbia would then control Fairfield’s future. “Columbia could control whether
we get an industry or not by not making sewer available,” he said. “And going
with Columbia would pull a whole huge amount of money out of Fairfield County and
send it to Columbia to develop their infrastructure. We can build our own
infrastructure in house and control it much cheaper and then keep all the
revenue here.”
Retired Blythewood attorney Stuart Andrews explained to the
residents their legal options to stop Fairfield County from discharging
wastewater into Cedar Creek. He said it could cost millions to mount a legal
campaign against the county but offered that it would be possible to slow the
process down to the point of effectively dismantling the county’s efforts.
Someone in the audience suggested bringing pressure on the
county by boycotting the merchants in Fairfield County.
By the end of the hour and a half meeting, many in the
audience remained convinced that the system would or could, somehow,
contaminate the creek and ruin their water wells.
According to South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) there is no conclusive evidence that water wells have been contaminated by treated wastewater discharges. Still, members of the audience insisted they want options for the discharged water other than Cedar Creek. Those other options, however, for one reason or another, are not a fit for the county (see ‘What Are The Options?’ below).
Longtime Cedar Creek resident Lynn Robertson is not
convinced. She said that while she wishes Fairfield well in its endeavor to
bring infrastructure and jobs to the county, she is not convinced that the
proposed wastewater treatment plant would not contaminate Cedar Creek.
“There are some other options and I just feel like, I hope and pray that they will look at other options for this rather than dumping it in Cedar Creek,” Robertson said. “I do not want Cedar Creek to be the wastewater pipeline through Richland County to the Broad River. No matter what they say, errors can occur.”
What are the Options?
contributed by the Richland County Conservation Committee
Fairfield County is setting up a new service area to provide
wastewater treatment to Winnsboro, Ridgeway, the Fairfield County Industrial
megasite and for existing and future development along the 1-77 corridor inside
Fairfield County.
This service area would be managed through a joint use
partnership agreement (the new Joint Water Authority) and a management entity
which is currently under development for the new area. This new service area
would require an amendment of the existing 208 (Wastewater) Water Quality
Management Plan for the area as well as a new National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System (NPDES) Permit which has not been applied for at this point.
More public meetings and informational sessions are being
planned by the County for the proposed site.
The Site
The final site for the wastewater treatment plant has not
been selected, although Fairfield County Council has approved the purchase of a
certain size and price of property. The County has an option agreement on a
50-acre site on Syrup Mill Road at Broom Mill Road.
If this site is selected the new discharge point will be
into Big Cedar Creek.
The plant will need approximately 7 to 10 acres, and will be
designed for an initial capacity of 2 million gallons per day (mgd) and a
maximum with additions of 4 mgd. Twenty-five percent of the waste to be treated
at the new site is projected to come from the megasite with the rest coming
from the Winnsboro and Ridgeway facilities as well as existing and future
development along the 1-77 corridor.
The Winnsboro and Ridgeway treatment facilities have been in
service for a very long time and are very near their flow capacities. The
Winnsboro facility currently discharges to Jackson Creek, and the Ridgeway
facility discharges to Big Cedar Creek upstream of where the new discharge is
currently proposed. Big Cedar Creek flows from Fairfield County into Richland
County and eventually into the Broad River.
The Options
Other alternatives to the proposed plant were discussed at
the Jan. 15 Environmental Planning Advisory Committee (EPAC) meeting. Those
options included revamping the existing Ridgeway or Winnsboro discharge,
providing onsite treatment at the megasite, piping to the Broad River, or land
application.
Revamping the Ridgeway site would be cost prohibitive and
undesirable because of the additional piping needed to cover the new areas
which would be serviced by the new site.
The Wateree is currently unable to accept more Ultimate
Oxygen Demanding (UOD) substances which are present in treated effluents.
Providing onsite treatment at the megasite would also negate
coverage of the new areas and again, treated effluent would end up in the
Wateree after flowing through Dutchman Creek.
Piping to the Broad River would be much more expensive than
the proposed new plant and would be cost prohibitive.
Land application would require an estimated 1,200 acres and
would also be cost prohibitive.
Cedar Creek Option
The plant proposed on Syrup Mill Road would provide tertiary
quality treatment to a re-use level discharging into Big Cedar Creek downstream
of the current Ridgeway discharge. This tertiary treatment discharge would be
of higher quality treated effluent than the existing Ridgeway discharge. In
addition, the megasite would be required to provide pretreatment of any
industrial type effluents to meet discharge standards from industrial sites
before the pre-treated effluent would go to the new plant. The county officials
are also working to find users in the area who could re-use the wastewater for
irrigation, industrial or other purposes. A preliminary engineering report is
projected to be completed for this project within 3 to 6 months.
John Culbreth of Thomas & Hutton engineering presents information about the proposed wastewater treatment plant to packed chamber during council’s meeting Monday night. | Barbara Ball
WINNSBORO – Over a hundred residents from lower Fairfield
County, Cedar Creek and the northwestern section of Blythewood, including the
mayor of Blythewood, filled Fairfield county council chambers and an overflow
room Monday evening during a three hour council meeting over concerns about a
wastewater treatment plant that council has proposed on a site near the
intersection of Syrup Mill and Broom Mill Roads.
While the county has only optioned the site at this point,
residents expressed concerns about the proximity of the site to their homes.
Their urgency was to stop or delay the third and final reading of Ordinance 738
which many thought would finalize the purchase of the Syrup Mill Road site.
County officials said, however, that the ordinance is not
for a particular parcel of land but authorizes the county to purchase at least
50 acres of land not to exceed a cost of $300,000 that would be suitable for
construction of a wastewater treatment facility.
After several false starts, council approved the ordinance
with a 4 – 3 vote with councilmen Moses Bell, Mikel Trapp and Douglas Pauley
voting against. Pauley represents the Syrup Mill Road area.
Residents voiced their concerns during public comment time
at the beginning of the meeting. But as the meeting wore on, tempers flared
with frequent interruptions and outbursts from the audience. At one point
chairman Neil Robinson threatened to eject those who continued to interrupt.
Addressing council, Don Quick, a resident of the Center
Creek community in Ridgeway, said the big issue is the stigma attached to a
wastewater plant and the effect it would have on home values in the area.
David Valentine, who also lives on Center Creek Road, said
the county’s proposal would be using antiquated processes. He addressed the
wastewater treatment plant as being located on an industrial site.
“Modern technology drives for a zero discharge proposal with
on-site holding ponds,” Valentine said.
While many of those attending the meeting live in proximity
to the plant, others who live downstream on Cedar Creek west of Blythewood in
Richland County expressed concern that the plan calls for the wastewater plant
to discharge treated wastewater into the creek.
“It’s bad enough that council would consider building an
industrial wastewater treatment plant in the midst of this bucolic residential
setting, but you would propose to flush the large toilet down Cedar Creek,”
George Walker, Jr., who owns a farm in Blythewood, said.
“What guarantees do we have that this discharge water will
not pollute the aquafers around and under the creek that so many families
depend on?” asked Sean Goff who owns a farm on Cedar Creek. “Data shows
elevated bacteria levels downstream of similar facilities. How can we let our
kids play in this creek with this in place?”
Other residents addressed odors, contamination, traffic and
the eyesore of the plant itself.
John Culbreth, principal/regional director of engineering
firm Thomas Hutton addressed those questions as well as another 100 or so
council had invited residents to send in.
With a power point presentation, Culbreth displayed what he
said the facility would look like – a state-of- the-art water treatment plant
recently constructed in the town of Isle of Palms.
“The type of system we’re proposing is what is being done in
coastal communities where you’re dealing with property next door worth upwards
of $2 million,” he said. “The one shown here is right next to a golf course.”
Culbreth said the golf course uses some of the discharged water for irrigation.
“It’s nice and clean. The system is all enclosed. There are
not big open aeration basins that you’re looking at. It’s not the old school
stuff you see driving down I-77. That’s not what’s being built. This,” he said,
pointing to the screen, “is what’s going to be built.”
“An odor scrub system will be in place, and as far as noise,
sound attenuation walls on the structure will minimize pump sounds. You
probably wouldn’t hear anything unless you’re on the property, and it would
sound more like office type activity, nothing more than that.”
Culbreth said there will be at least 100 feet of buffer
around the property and could be more if that particular sight is eventually
settled on. He also said a membrane
bioreactor (MBR) system, the latest technology, was chosen for its advanced
level of treatment of the wastewater that will come out and because it has a
small footprint.
“The system can be put inside of a facility that will look
like a golf club house. It’s all inside and covered,” he said. “This is the
state-of-the-art that we can do right now. It’s not your typical wastewater
treatment plant. ”
Pauley asked if there was a reason the plant could not be
built on the megasite.
“The issue is that the megasite is not the best site
countywide,” Culbreth said. “If you’re going to try to serve just the megasite,
then put it there. But the goal here is to have larger investment to the
overall regional community, to benefit the overall area, and the best location
for that is closer to where the site is that it benefits. And it’s the area
that’s going to grow first. If the state’s going to help provide $40 million to
pay for a wastewater treatment plant, it has to benefit the entire region, not
just the megasite.”
While County Administrator Jason Taylor said the county has
looked at other properties and that a couple of others are still in play, all
of them are going to discharge into Cedar Creek.
As far as the possibility of water well contamination along
the creek, Culbreth said with this type of system that will be used, he didn’t
see any concerns with discharging into the creek.
“It’s septic tanks that are about five to 20 percent of the
causes of any kind of well contamination,” he said. “That’s on DHEC’s website.
I’ve never been asked to fix a well that was impacted.”
“Are you saying it [water discharged from the plant] won’t
affect their wells?” Pauley asked.
“Yes sir, I am saying that,” Culbreth said.
“The level of treatment we’re talking about is near drinking water standards. [This discharged water] will be about as clean as the water in the creek.”
BLYTHEWOOD – The bridge on Pine Grove Road over Cedar Creek
is set to be replaced next month. The South Carolina Department of
Transportation has scheduled the bridged to be closed on Dec. 2 for
approximately 14 weeks, according to a SCDOT spokesperson.
Pending any delays due to weather, fabricator and other
delay, the bridge should be reopened to traffic by March 9, 2020.
