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Tag: Wastewater treatment plant

  • Officials answer WWTP/Penny Tax Questions

    WINNSBORO – The Voice has received several letters from readers in regard to the penny tax and the wastewater treatment plant that ask some of the same questions that have also been posed on Facebook pages by citizens in both Fairfield County and Blythewood (Cedar Creek area.) The Voice asked county officials s to answer these questions and clarify any misinformation. While county officials can provide information about the penny tax, they cannot advocate for or against it. Questions that might be construed as advocating were answered by Gene Stevens, President of the Fairfield Chamber of Commerce or Neil Robinson, County Council Chairman.

    Q:  Since Chamber is on the taxpayer’s payroll and it is illegal for County taxes to be used to promote the penny tax…there appears to be a serious conflict of interest.

    A:  The Chamber is not on the County’s payroll. The County grants the Chamber funds every budget year for various purposes, mostly to promote tourism and business activity such as the Ag & Art Tour. Rock Around the Clock, etc. The County’s funds are not being used to promote the Penny sales Tax. The Fairfield Chamber of Commerce is a 501 C6 organization which gives them the right to advocate on any issue they view fit. “501 C6 tax status is that it allows organizations to engage in unlimited amounts of lobbying.” No Chamber dues, County or Town funds were used in funding this effort. It was all raised by outside sources. No employees at the Fairfield Chamber of Commerce are County employees.

    Q:  Shouldn’t a potential industry pay for the WWTP it needs?

    A:  They do through impact fees. However, the waste water treatment plant must be in place first.

    Without proper infrastructure, companies will not establish job creating, tax paying facilities.

    Industries pay impact fees to connect to the system along with usage rates. Impact Fees or tap fees based on volume and are similar to what residential customers pay when they build a new house and connect to a municipal system.

    Q:  Now, the county is asking Fairfield County residents, and me when I shop there, to pay a 14 percent tax on nearly everything that we buy in the county or you order on line.

    A:  This is not true. This is an extremely misleading tactic used repeatedly by people opposed to sales tax increases across the country. Claiming the county’s penny tax brings the sales tax in Fairfield County to a 14% sales tax increase is disingenuous and not at all accurate.

    The following explanation we think gives a good understanding of how the tax works.

    “Though 14 percent is the mathematical rise in the rate of fractional rate charged, it does not accurately convey the impact of the tax because it is a comparison of fractional rates and includes no whole numbers. To determine the true percentage increase, the formula used must include the real-world cost of goods involved. For example, the current sales tax on a qualifying $10 purchase [in Fairfield County] is .70 cents. If the referendum is approved, the same item would cost $10.80. To calculate the increase, subtract the current cost from the proposed cost ($10.80- $10.70 = 0.1) and divide the difference by the current cost (0.1 ÷ 10.70 = 0.009345). To convert the answer to a percentage, multiply the quotient by 100 (0.009345 x 100 = 0.93), and the product is rounded to 1 percent.” – Larry Wood, Post and Courier

    Put simply, assume you choose to visit Laura’s Tea Room in Ridgeway and you spend $10.00 on great sandwich plate and a cup of tea, your additional cost due to the penny sales tax is ten cents. If you add the existing 6% state sales tax and the 1% road tax, your total cost would be $10.80, not $11.40 which is what you would pay if a 14% sales tax were imposed, which is not the case.

    That’s why the 14% increase statement is a misleading tactic.

    Now assume you spent $10.00 on a sandwich in Blythewood at Scotties. In Richland County, your total costs would be $11.00…twenty cents more than Fairfield County. Richland County charges 2% more on every dollar spent which you can see from our above response is not a 28% increase.

    Another thing important to note is that this 1% sales tax isn’t applied to non-prepared food (groceries) or any medicine, so to say “a 14 percent tax on nearly everything that we buy” is not true on two levels.

    The real issue is not the additional minimal impact of a 1% increase on local citizens but the significant burden of high unemployment, lack of amenities, and a dismal future for our kids without the 1% increase. Remember, for the last twenty years, we have been burdened with the highest unemployment in the state. Just prior to Covid, as a result of our commitment to economic development efforts, our unemployment rate plummeted and there were at least nine other counties with higher rates. In the last 18 months, we have announced more jobs than in the previous 15 years combined. We have momentum and sewer capacity is absolutely foundational to the future that our citizens and our children deserve. Neil Robinson, Chair Fairfield County Council.

    Q:  [The county has] 16 properties on the I-77 Corridor internet site for sale or lease. Two spec. buildings built in 2014 that have never been used. They have 600 acres on Cook road in industrial Park sitting there empty.

    A:  This is not true. To begin, the first spec building that was built in Walter B. Brown Industrial Park was sold to a company called CTG. They currently use the facility as a distribution warehouse. The second Spec Building you are referring to has been sold to Oldcastle APG who plans to invest $28.9 million and begin operating out of the facility by Q1 of 2021. They will hire around 100 employees and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in property taxes.

    The Fairfield County Commerce Center is still in the process of being developed. The first tenant was Bomag. Currently we have other prospects considering the park. Incidentally, they initially looked at Fairfield County because of the speculative building. We recently received grant funding to pre-grade sites for prospective industry. Even during Covid, we are experiencing significant interest.

    Q:  No Fairfield residents are receiving new sewer from this 50 million dollar spec. plant

    A:  The plant is estimated to cost $32 million. Most of which will be offset by grant funding. Initially, we will extend collection lines along major arteries to allow residents to connect. We are pursuing new residential and commercial development as aggressively as industrial activity.

    Q:  Not a SINGLE WWTF in SC has contained spills. NOT ONE!

    A:  This is misleading. The MBR system, which is the proposed facility, has recorded no leaks in the wwtp located in Isle of Palms. We propose to build the same kind of state-of-the-art all enclosed wastewater treatment plant.

    Q:  There has been NO CONSIDERATION on the impact on animals like deer, turkey, raccoons, possums and thousands of birds that will consume the effluent and eventually get sick and die

    A:  This is not true. Studies have been conducted on the impacts to the area and the creek. DHEC has approved Cedar Creek as capable for accepting the discharge. Cedar Creek already accepts effluent from the Ridgeway Waste Water Facility and we are unaware of any adverse impact on wildlife. As has been stated multiple times, the MBR system generates a very clean effluent. In fact, it is near potable.

    Q:  How many think that locating sports areas near a wastewater plant is a fun place to play?!

    A:  First, the plant itself will not be located directly by the fields. The proposed exhibit you a referencing has the plant at the southern end of the property. Between the plant and the fields, there will be significant vegetative buffer, meaning that the plant itself will not be visible. The grading work that will be done on site will make it so the plant will be lower than the ball fields. In addition the plant itself is a relatively small MBR (Membrane Bio Reactor) system. The entire facility will be enclosed.

    Also, the Columbia Waste Water Facility is located adjacent to the exclusive private Heathwood Hall Episcopal School which has numerous outdoor recreational activities including sports fields.

    Camden recently opened their Riverfront Environmental Park. This was a former sewer facility pond site and is also located by the existing waste water facility. Camden received a Municipal Association of South Carolina (MASC) Achievement Award for this park. 30 cities and towns submitted projects and initiatives for consideration in the annual award.

    Q:  Had they [county] set aside the money that they have spent on this [Penny Sales Tax] PR campaign and design, how much closer would they be in getting the wastewater where it needs to go – into the Broad River.

    A:  The county is not participating in any advocacy campaign. The Fairfield Chamber of Commerce is running an advocacy campaign that has been paid for by donations from private organizations. As previously stated, the Fairfield Chamber of Commerce is an 501 C6 organization. 501 C6 organizations can participate in advocacy work. 501 C6 tax status allows organizations to engage in unlimited amounts of lobbying. Executive advocacy comprises a significant portion of the activities of many business leagues. Zero county dollars have been spent on any PR campaign for the Penny Sales Tax.

    Fairfield County has only hosted an educational Zoom meeting.

    Q:  The effluent will contaminate the water wells along Cedar Creek.

    A:  No. And to be clear, Ridgeway’s existing facility already discharges effluent into Cedar Creek now and has for years. Out of concern for the wells, the county requested a hydrologist study the potential impacts on groundwater.  The study concluded that there were no ramifications. If you have interest in looking at the study please reach out to the Economic Development office. We can make that available for anyone who wants to read through it.

    Conclusions of the study are as follows:

    In the South Carolina Piedmont, water does not flow across topographic divides. Instead it flows within the watershed via relatively short distances from topographic divides toward stream channels.

    Streams in the Piedmont Province are characteristically referred to as “gaining” streams because the streams gain water from discharging groundwater along their length; thus. The Piedmont aquifer feeds flow to streams rather than streams feeding the aquifer.

    Although there are rare instances of “losing” streams (streams that discharge water to groundwater) in the Piedmont Province, they are usually associated with specific rock types like limestone or dolomite, which are not mapped within the Big Cedar Creek watershed.

    Water in Piedmont watersheds invariably flows from high elevations to low elevations, and toward the stream network. This flow pattern includes subsurface groundwater flow.

    The chance of recovered well water being influenced by surface water is remote, because the volume of water pumped for domestic water supply needs is miniscule compare to the volume of water traveling within the watershed from stream divides toward streams.

    Q:  Why can’t the wastewater treatment plant wait till a later time?

    A:  Fairfield County will be unable to attract any new industry without an expansion of sewer capacity.

    We are almost out of capacity now. We must continue to lure investment and add jobs as well as curb the trend of population decline in Fairfield County.

    Q:  Did the county pay the newspaper or a PR firm to write the story on the wastewater plant/sports complex?

    A:  No

    Q:  If the penny tax passes, how much total sales tax will residents be paying?

    A:  One penny on every dollar spent, ten cents on every ten dollars spent and one dollar on every hundred dollars spent.

    Q:  In The Voice article, county officials said there is only 34,000 gallons per day of sewer capacity available. The Town of Winnsboro has an available capacity of 287,000 gallons per day, and capacity from closed industries would contribute another 255,000 gallons per day.

    A:  Officials have said there is only 34,000 gpd available at the mega site, Fairfield Commerce Center, Exits 32 and 34.  The existing collection lines and pump stations are inadequate, undersized, out dated and in need of upgrading. In order for the growth areas to access Winnsboro’s excess capacity, we would have to spend $10M-$12M on collection lines.  Conservatively, we can build a plant to initially handle 2 mgd and easily expand to 4 mgd for $8-16 per gallon. Economically, it makes no sense to spend $12M to upgrade sewer collection lines and not create any new sewer capacity.

    The Winnsboro engineers did identify 255,000 gpd that can be potentially “reclaimed,“ but DHEC has not yet signed off on this request.  Until they do, there is only 287,000 gpd available, but not accessible.

  • Council fields penny tax questions on virtual town hall webinar

    WINNSBORO – An important local question is on the ballot this year in Fairfield County: a proposed penny sales tax, earmarked to fund a much-needed wastewater treatment plant.

    If it’s not approved, county officials say, that will mean other, typically less popular, sources of revenue will have to be used to fund the plant – for example, a property tax increase, a sewer rate increase, and potentially cuts in services like public safety.

    The county has purchased the land and is moving forward with the project. It’s up to the voters in Fairfield County to decide whether to impose the new sales tax or use one or more of the other funding sources instead.

    County officials held an information meeting Tuesday evening to answer questions about the wastewater treatment plant project and the penny tax question on the Nov. 3 ballot. They answered questions from the public during the virtual town hall meeting, which was held via Zoom.

    “The wastewater treatment plant is a need, not a want,” Fairfield County Economic Development Director Ty Daven port said, explaining that Fairfield County is nearly at capacity with its current wastewater treatment capabilities, making further development in the county a near impossibility without adding more capacity.

    Part of understanding the current plan for adding sewer capacity means recognizing how much has changed since the failed nuclear plant project – once viewed as an economic savior for the revenue infusion it was expected to provide – fell apart.

    In some ways, it means a different future than was anticipated five years ago, when the previous county council and administrator put together a 50-year plan.

    “When you do things, you have to do them in the context of your times, and at that time I think they were confident that the nuclear plant would be built, and that they would have enough money to essentially put in the lines and hook to Richland County or Columbia,” Fairfield County Administrator Jason Taylor said in response to a question about the county’s departure from that plan.

    “It was not going to be that we would have a [wastewater treatment] system here in Fairfield County,” he said.

    But in the current reality, Taylor said, not only would the county lose autonomy by being dependent on Columbia’s wastewater systems, but the fees and costs involved would be too high. Without a new infusion of nuclear plant revenue to fund its infrastructure needs, the county has had to come up with a new plan.

    Finding a good site for a wastewater treatment plant was a challenge, county officials have said. But after an extensive site search and negotiations with the landowner, Fairfield officials settled on the site that they just purchased, which is located on Cedar Creek near Interstate 77’s Exit 32.

    It had to be located on a stream large enough to discharge the treated wastewater, and also close to industrial development areas.

    Pumping it to the Broad River would cost more than double the current plan, Davenport said, in response to a viewer’s question about the options considered for the project. Also, neighboring Richland County took a position against Fairfield’s proposed plant.

    “The reasoning they gave was that Richland County currently operates a wastewater treatment plant on the Broad River that has been allocated a certain amount of discharge. And I guess pollutants in the discharge… are at their max,” Davenport said.

    “And if we’re allowed to discharge into the Broad River, then they’ll have to spend more money, basically, to reduce the amount of pollution that they’re putting into the Broad. So, it affects their budget.”

    Bill Bingham, owner of American Consulting Engineers, the engineering firm hired by the county, talked through some of the details of Fairfield’s new plant.

    “The current proposal, as it stands right now, is for a membrane bioreactor wastewater treatment facility. What this means is basically that it is a tertiary, which is the highest level of treatment we have in wastewater. It basically meets a Class I reliability standard, which means you have full redundancy so that if one component goes bad, there’s another component to take its place,” Bingham said.

    “MBR technology is basically a very fine filter… This is a biological plant, which removes the waste using special bugs to eat the waste, but then you’ve got to filter those out, and the membranes provide the filter, and what results is a water that is near drinking water quality.”

    He said the plant will also come with an odor control system so that it does not emit an odor to surrounding areas.

    In response to a question about the potential for contamination of Cedar Creek, Bingham’s brother Bill, also with the company, made a familiar comparison: “Much like you have a nuclear plant here in Fairfield County and that nuclear plant has redundancy, that means there are multiple systems. If one fails… there’s backups to backups.”

    In response to a question about current infrastructure, Taylor said the construction of this new plant will free up capacity in the existing system, allowing for expansion in the town of Winnsboro using current wastewater capacity – and touted the importance of local partnerships.

    In addition to the town of Winnsboro, the county also has partnerships with the town of Blythewood, which is considering purchasing 60 acres of the site to build a sports complex on land adjacent to the sewer plant site, and the state, which has helped with the purchase of a mega-site for future industrial development and is helping with the sewer plant project as well.

    County officials’ overall vision for the site goes beyond adding sewer capacity for current needs and is focused on the big-picture economic development of Fairfield County.

    In addition to the mega-site, county officials also hope to see commercial and industrial development take off around Exit 32 with the addition of new wastewater capacity.

    “We have ample natural gas, we have ample electricity, we have great highway access off of I-77, we’re close to an international airport and we’ve got a large labor pool to pull from,” Davenport said. “So, we are in a good – a great position, really. We just do not have the sewer capacity to maximize our potential.”

    The county has done well with industrial announcements in recent months, Davenport said, and a big announcement was made this week Oldcastle APG is coming to Fairfield County and will make use of some of the remaining capacity.

    “If we do not add capacity and we have one medium-sized industrial user come online, we will have no more capacity left and we will be in a moratorium situation, will be shut down as far as our recruitment of new industry, as well as our existing companies – they won’t be able to expand,” he said. “It is a critical situation, a critical need we have. We really do have to move forward.”

    But his hope is that the project, which has a construction timeline of 24 to 30 months, will do more for Fairfield County than just meet immediate development needs; his hope is that it will facilitate the kind of development that reverses a 50-year trend of population loss by providing opportunity for the county’s young people.

    “We purchased a 1,200-acre mega-site located on I-77,” Davenport said. “We need to allocate between 500,000 and a million gallons per day for that site so we can be successful in recruiting a larger employer. It will possibly be a large facility that is going to be kind of a game-changer for the county, and it’s critical that we keep moving forward.”

    In the big picture, he said, while building wastewater infrastructure comes with a price tag now, the private industrial and commercial development that this investment makes possible will generate not only enough revenue to cover the cost of infrastructure, but to potentially reduce property taxes and increase services throughout the county.

    The penny sales tax is a common means of funding capital projects in South Carolina and is used by 43 of the 46 counties in the state, including Richland, Davenport said. Some basic necessities, including food and medicine, are exempt from the tax.

    “The good thing about the Penny sales tax is that it does not single out property owners, it is an alternative to property tax,” Taylor said. “It has the added benefit [that] non-residents – not just residents – and visitors would also pay.”

    Also, the revenue from the tax is tied to a specific project – in this case a sewer plant and its associated infrastructure – and cannot be used for anything else. So, if voters decide to impose the tax Nov. 3, they will be designating the money for this project only.

    Asked about the impact of the tax on the average person, Taylor summed it up this way: “Basically, if you spend $1,000, you’re going to spend $1,010. It’ll impact you $10. And again, it will impact those outside of the county who spend money here, and in that respect it’ll be transferred in.”

  • Proposed wastewater treatment plant site includes sports complex, water recreation, shopping and more

    FAIRFIELD COUNTY – With a $1.8 million land deal being proposed by Fairfield County, a partnership between the county and the Town of Blythewood is on track to check two big items off of local wish lists: a much-needed wastewater treatment plant and a ballfield complex for youth sports teams.

    Fairfield County Council Chair Neil Robinson said both projects are part of a long-range vision that could turn Interstate-77’s Exit 32 in Fairfield County into a new hotspot for development.

    Fairfield County Administrator Jason Taylor agreed, adding that if all the pieces come together, it could be a great benefit to the citizens of both Fairfield County and Blythewood.

    “The way you grow a community is not just by shuffling money around inside the county or town; you need to bring in outside dollars.” Taylor said, touting both the tournament-hosting potential of a sports complex and the potential draw of adjacent commercial development made possible by the wastewater treatment plant.

    “There’s a synergy here – one thing helps build upon the other, and all those things help the critical thing that we’re focused on here [with this project], the wastewater treatment plant,” he said.

    The need for increased wastewater capacity has been high on Fairfield’s priority list recently as most of its existing capacity is already in use. The county has brought in considerable new industry and accompanying new jobs during the last three years or so, leaving Fairfield with only about 30,000 gallons of wastewater capacity – a fact that limits current potential for both industrial and other types of development all over the county, and is now prompting some industrial prospects to look elsewhere, taking their jobs with them.

    “Adding more wastewater capacity is key to the future development of commercial and residential in the county. Without the new capacity, the creation of new jobs, shopping opportunities and residential development will be severely limited,” Taylor said.

    “We had to find a site for the plant that has direct access to a stream that can handle the expected effluent and will not require a long-distance pipeline to a discharge site,” he said. The county settled on property on Peach Road at the intersection of Cook Road just west of Exit 32 in Fairfield County, just one exit north of Blythewood.

    As it turned out, the property for sale is about 385 acres, much larger and more expensive than what’s needed for the plant. 

    Enter Blythewood, where the need for ballfields has become a high priority with the exponential growth of the community. Building a sports complex was something newly elected Mayor Bryan Franklin talked about a lot in his campaign last fall. Blythewood, home of the popular Blythewood Youth Baseball & Softball League (BYSBL), has the revenue potential from accommodation and hospitality tax to purchase property for a sports complex but has not so far found a suitable/affordable site.

    The Plan

    The proposal is for the county to develop the wastewater treatment plant and an extensive recreation park on 225+/- acres it purchased on the south side of the property, and Blythewood is considering purchasing 60+/- acres in the center of the property for the sports complex. The current land owner, Joseph Richardson, would retain about 100+/- acres on the north side of the property for private multi-use development, including commercial, possibly with apartments above.

    In addition, the county portion of the park – a site not suited for industrial development – will include the wastewater treatment plant concealed in a heavily wooded area and a 50-acre pond that, Taylor said, is a potential showplace, ideally suited for fishing, kayaking, canoeing, and maybe a water’s edge event venue as well as a network of recreational trails.

    “Because the wastewater treatment plant is located on the property, it could reduce development costs on the site as much as $2-$3 million since they won’t have to run pipes, acquire easements and install pump stations,” Fairfield County Economic Development Director Ty Davenport added.

    Taylor said a partnership between Fairfield and Blythewood and the landowner just makes sense.

    Blythewood on Board

    Franklin agrees.

    “It’s just too good of an opportunity for us to pass up,” Franklin told The Voice. “While our council has not yet voted on this plan, we’ve discussed it in executive session and I know that all of our council members are excited about it. We’re looking forward to moving on it.”

    That move, however, could take as much as six to eight months, he said.

    “Blythewood doesn’t have a big budget, but we could pay for the land over a three-year period of time. We just need time to assess it, get our funds together, and let Fairfield get the zoning on the property.”

    Having grown up in Blythewood, Franklin said he has fond memories of playing on the three BYSBL fields when he was young. Those fields, today, can barely accommodate the number of kids who want to play. Franklin said he would like to see the town have a state-of-the-art facility like this to support the BYSBL while also bringing substantial revenue to the town.  

    “Located on I-77 in the center of the state, the sports complex is going to attract kids of all sports from all areas of the state,” Franklin said. “And the commercial area is what the residents of Blythewood want to see – more restaurants, more things to do and close to home – just five miles from our Blythewood exit.”

    A Mutual Benefit

    “Both Blythewood and Fairfield will benefit from what the other has in the park,” Davenport said. “For instance, Fairfield would have joint use of Blythewood’s sports complex and neither would have to pay fees. A rendering of the complex features up to eight baseball fields and five soccer/football fields among other amenities that might include a hotel with balconies for viewing games.”

    From a development standpoint, Taylor said, the wastewater treatment plant and sports complex projects are just the beginning. In addition to meeting current needs, pairing needed infrastructure with a tourism-drawing amenity will promote good, sustainable development at Exit 32.

    That could help the county land a large manufacturing facility, Taylor said, such as an auto plant, just down the road at the future Exit 32 megasite. Such a facility, he said, would be a stable provider of jobs for the county and could also help attract the kind of planned, commercial development on Richardson’s acreage that might be anchored by a major sporting goods store and include hotels, restaurants and retail, which would bring in revenue during sports tournaments as well as serving Interstate travelers.

    Annexation

    Because of the proximity of the property to the Town of Blythewood along Boney Road, the option is on the table for Blythewood to annex the entire 385 acres and reap considerable revenue from not only the sports complex, but the accommodation and hospitality taxes generated by the hotels and restaurants, as well as franchise fees, business license fees and building permits from the commercial development.

    The long term plan could be extremely beneficial for the citizens of both Blythewood and Fairfield County and would certainly raise the fortunes of all of the residents of Fairfield County on many levels, including jobs and new residential neighborhoods, Taylor said.

    “The county would collect property taxes on all three parcels. The site generates about $4,000 annually in taxes now,” he said. “A single business in the commercial section could bring in well over $100,000 annually in property taxes. The property tax potential for the county is in the millions”.

    County officials say the several hundred acres adjacent to the 385 acres are prime for the kind of nature-based housing subdivisions that have replaced golf courses as the preferred type of residential development across the country.

    Davenport said the Exit 32 interchange, itself, is a valuable asset with I-77, a major travel artery between Columbia and Charlotte, a continuous resource.

    “An interstate exit like Exit 32 costs about $50-75 million, a resource that we need to take advantage of,” he said.

    Master Planned

    “I would really like to see this development taken to the next level,” Taylor said. “We hope to develop a master plan and development agreement on top of everything else, including tax incentives and other incentives that make it more desirable for someone to come in and develop the site to its best and highest use.

    “We’re not just dreaming here,” Taylor said. “I think all of this can be reality. We want to create a traditional, attractive community in the commercial section that may have upstairs apartments, and where people can easily take advantage of the proposed parks and the easy access to Columbia on the interstate. We want to be proactive and get ahead of this [growth at Exit 32] with a development that is well thought out and sustainable.

    “All this is driven by the wastewater treatment plant,” he said. “We have to have the plant to support the future megasite just six miles up the road. And when that plant hits, this 385 acres is going to explode. Commerce has told us we have to be ready because when it does hit, it will be hard at that point to catch up. I think that if we do this public-private partnership right, everything will work.”

    “At this point, of course, it’s just a proposal, a public-private partnership between the county and the landowner to spur development at Exit 32 to support the wastewater treatment plant and the plant supporting growth, hand in hand,” Taylor said. “The county is also trying to work with Blythewood to accomplish some of the goals that their mayor has set, such as annexation and recreation. We can all three win here because our interests are aligned to have improved access for all of our citizens to quality of life amenities such as new parks, shopping options and residential choices – all the things we can potentially have on that 385 acres,” he said.

    Though there are still a lot of details that remain to be worked out on the project, all parties are hopeful.

    Timeline

    The timeline, of course, will be measured in years. Robinson said 3-4 years is realistic for the $32 million plant to go through permitting and construction, after which its capacity will be available to serve new development in the county, both commercial and residential.

    In addition to potential state funding contributing to the plant’s construction, Robinson expects to pull $5 million from county coffers, cover $8-10 million with the passage of a new penny sales tax, and cover the rest with revenue generated by end users.

    While Robinson said the penny tax is the most effective way to fund the plant, the tax is dependent on voter approval on Nov. 3.

    “With the penny tax, council wouldn’t have to raise property taxes,” Robinson said.

    The wastewater treatment plant’s two-million-gallon capacity, expandable to four million gallons, is expected to serve Fairfield County’s needs for at least 20 years.

     “The wastewater treatment plant has to happen. Without it, Fairfield County will have very limited growth potential in the future; but when it’s built, the county will be in a great position to welcome new growth, and to more fully realize its potential,” Taylor said.

    Robinson agreed.

    “While people don’t necessarily love a wastewater treatment facility, and paying for it with a penny tax doesn’t give people a warm fuzzy feeling, they love what it brings – jobs, retail, industrial and residential growth, recreation, all of that and, quite frankly, lower property taxes in the end,” Robinson said.

    The county has scheduled a virtual town hall meeting for 6 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 6 to explain the plan and answer any questions from the public. To register for the webinar meeting, go to: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_sbFWi2blQxSOIVks-WpNdw.

  • County proceeds with referendum

    WINNSBORO – With minimal discussion, the Fairfield County Council moved forward at this month’s meeting with plans to put a wastewater treatment plant referendum on November’s ballot.

    If given final approval next month, the ballot question will ask voters to authorize a one percent sales tax in the county, and the county would issue bonds, if needed, which would be paid back with revenue generated by the tax. The money would be earmarked for capital projects, specifically the wastewater treatment plant and other needed wastewater infrastructure.

    “Once you get to a certain point as far as capacity with sewer, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) does step in. They put you in a moratorium situation, which means basically you can issue no more building permits; you can’t issue anymore connections to the sewer plant,” explained County Administrator Jason Taylor.

    “You do get in a position where you can’t accept any additional growth, and DHEC will shut you down,” he said.

    “The county is not in that position yet, but it only has 32,000 gallons of available wastewater capacity remaining for industrial development,” Taylor said. “Due to small sized lines, that is all that is available for the commerce park or mega site, which is not nearly enough. One company could take all of that.”

    While Winnsboro does have roughly 100,000 gpd of capacity available in town, adding more capacity for the county has come to the forefront as a priority.

    The anticipated revenue from the tax, which will expire after eight years, is $11.5 million – a bit more than the $9.35 million that would be authorized for a bond issue.

    The meeting, which was held in person but with several participants calling in by phone or video, began with a public hearing, in which the one comment that had been received was read by Clerk to Council Patti Davis. The comment, from District 1 resident Randy Bright, was in favor of the proposal.

    “Building water and wastewater infrastructure in rural and urban communities creates jobs, stimulates the private sector, and increases a community’s tax base,” Bright wrote, citing a Duke University study. “For each dollar spent building water or wastewater infrastructure, about $15 is created in private investment and $14 added to the local property tax base.”

    Most of the county council’s discussion was centered around questions clarifying the details of the proposal, including some hypothetical what-if scenarios and the reasoning behind why the proposal is structured the way it is.

    Attorney C.D. Rhodes, who is assisting Fairfield county with the referendum, said in response to council members’ questions that if something were to change, enabling the project to be funded by other means, the revenue from the one percent sales tax would still be earmarked for capital projects.

    Council would then have to initiate another referendum for voters to approve its use for specific projects. To designate projects without a referendum would require waiting until the end of the tax’s eight-year term.

    Rhodes also explained the likely need for a bond issue: Unlike counties that use a tax of this type to fund a list of projects, which can be done on a pay-as-you-go basis, Fairfield County doesn’t have the luxury of waiting eight years to build the wastewater treatment plant; the urgency of the project means that ideally it should be built in two or three years.

    “You would have, at the very least, a year’s worth of tax collections to prove to yourself and the public and everyone else – and banks, honestly – to prove that those collections were going to come in as expected,” Rhodes said of the situation prior to any bond issue.

    “If we get a year into this thing, and for instance the Covid situation hasn’t improved, then it may make lots of sense for you to wait until you’re two years out and you have two years of tax collections and you increase your level of certainty,” he said.

    “The good news is that, as you wait, those taxes keep coming in and they keep getting deposited into your bank, and so the amount of the bonds that you have to borrow keeps going down and down and down, and you have cash on hand that you can use for the plant whenever the time is right to build it.”

    While a couple of the council members expressed distaste for the idea of borrowing money, the majority supported the project as a whole, and the council voted 5-2 to approve offering the referendum, which would allow the voters to decide.

    Chairman Neil Robinson, Vice Chair Bertha Goins, and council Members Clarence Gilbert, Jimmy Ray Douglas, and Doug Pauley voted in favor.  Council Members Moses Bell and Mikel Trapp were opposed.

    Vice Chairman Bertha Goins said it’s important to get information about the project and the referendum out to the voters, and she urged her fellow council members to share information in their districts.

    “We need to… get an understanding to the citizens of the value of this one percent sales tax and what they’re going to reap long-term,” Goins said.

    “If we do this and we do it right and we’re successful with it, by the grace of God, once the wastewater treatment plant is in place, the lines are in place, [and] we begin to get an influx of businesses and people, we won’t have to worry about bonds, we won’t have to worry about levying taxes or any of that, we’ll just be growing what we’ve already invested in.”

  • Council considers 1¢ tax for water, sewer

    WINNSBORO – Fairfield County is bringing in more experts to help counter Richland County’s growing opposition to a proposed wastewater treatment plant. 

    Meantime, Fairfield County Council is also moving forward with a proposed capital project sales tax to help pay for the facility that’s seen as vital to recruiting more industry to Fairfield County. 

    On Monday night, the council voted 5-2 on the first of three readings to implement the sales tax. Council members Moses Bell and Mikel Trapp opposed. 

    There was no discussion during first reading, but later on Councilwoman Bertha Goins said the tax is needed to further develop Fairfield’s infrastructure. 

    “I know when you say taxes, people start fretting and they get excited. I can understand that but taxes are how counties and towns are built.”  

    County Administrator Jason Taylor said the county’s two existing treatment plants are nearing capacity, aren’t expandable and wouldn’t even be approved today by the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control. Additionally, existing underground lines are undersized, he said. 

    “While we’ve had a good run with economic development, if we don’t do something to address our infrastructure capacity, we won’t have anything left to sell to attract new industry,” Taylor said. 

    Goins also voiced reservations about Richland County’s efforts to block Fairfield’s wastewater facility. 

    “I was very disappointed with the action that Richland County took with the wastewater treatment plant. It was very discouraging. That’s not the way to build relationships,” Goins said.

    In May, Richland County submitted a report to the Central Midlands Council of Governments (COG) outlining the county’s opposition to the Fairfield facility. 

    The report, produced by Richland County Assistant Administrator John Thompson at the behest of recently defeated Councilwoman Joyce Dickerson, outlines well water contamination concerns of Richland County residents living along Cedar Creek, where wastewater would discharge. 

    Richland County submitted its report despite DHEC recently telling The Voice that the agency has no record of wastewater contaminating water wells in South Carolina. Most contamination of private water wells is caused by nearby septic tanks, an agency representative said.

    In response to the Richland vote, Fairfield County is retaining an additional engineering and legal firms to counter opposition to the wastewater plant.

    At last week’s Fairfield Joint Water and Sewer Commission meeting, the group voted to retain American Engineering. Commissioners said American has more experience working on local projects, which they said would be needed when Fairfield pitches the plant to the Central Midlands Council of Governments.

    Winnsboro Mayor Roger Gaddy, who chairs the joint water-sewer panel, also voiced disappointment in Richland County’s opposition. He said having an engineering firm who has experience presenting to the COG would be beneficial in explaining the project and countering misinformation.

    “We have to have someone help us educate people with opposition to help them understand the sophistication for the wastewater treatment plant and the negligible impact it will have on the environment,” Gaddy said. 

    The water-sewer commission later voted to retain Willoughby and Hoefer law firm for the same reason. Fairfield County has previously budgeted $100,000 to cover anticipated increases in legal fees associated with the wastewater facility.

    “I think a lot of this is an emotional issue. We’ve got to have some folks who can explain to Richland County, the citizens and the politicians there, that we’re not trying to do anything detrimental to the environment,” Gaddy said. “It really isn’t going to be how people have it pictured in their minds.”

  • Richland votes to stop Fairfield’s wastewater plant

    COLUMBIA – In what Fairfield officials say was an unprecedented action, Richland County Council voted unanimously on May 5 to direct staff and technical committee appointees to vote in opposition to Fairfield County’s plans to construct a wastewater treatment plant that they say would bring industry, jobs, housing subdivisions and general prosperity to Fairfield.

    The three-page document, produced by Richland County Assistant Administrator John Thompson at the behest of Councilwoman Joyce Dickerson, outlines the concerns of Richland County residents who live along Cedar Creek where Fairfield’s treated effluent will be discharged. Dickerson, who is battling for her council seat in the June 9 Democratic primary, said many of the Cedar Creek residents live in her district.

    Thompson sent the document along with letters urging denial of the treatment facility to the Environmental Planning Advisory Committee (EPAC), the Bureau of Water for S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC), and the Central Midlands Council of Governments (CMCOG) which is the governing authority that allocates capacity for the wastewater treatment facilities in the midlands.

    Should these agencies bow to Richland’s directives, Fairfield County Administrator Jason Taylor said it would be devastating for Fairfield. Fairfield County has had recent success in recruiting new industry. With only 34,000 gallons per day left, a single small employer could consume the remaining capacity.  

    “Without a new wastewater treatment facility, economic and community development would stop,” Taylor said. “We would not be able to recruit new industry, new housing subdivisions or other commercial development. It would bring future growth to a standstill. This wastewater treatment facility is absolutely critical to the future of Fairfield County, without it there would be no new jobs.

    Later in the summer, Fairfield will present its proposal to the EPAC (Environmental Planning Advisory Committee), a recommending body to the COG board which will have the final say on whether to allocate capacity for the proposed facility.

    In the document, Thompson includes an extensive excerpt from DHEC’s web page that DHEC acknowledges is outdated. The document also lists what he says are reservations expressed by Cedar Creek residents – primarily that the wastewater effluent will contaminate the creek water as well as the aquifers that supply their water wells, their only source of drinking water,

    Fairfield County Director of Economic Development Ty Davenport said the document is based on fears, not facts.

    Chuck Williams with SCDHEC, told The Voice that there is no record of any water wells in South Carolina being contaminated with wastewater, that most contamination of private water wells in the state is caused by nearby septic tanks.

    Engineers and SCDHEC refute the assertion that the effluent discharged into the creek will impact aquifers and resident water wells. They say Fairfield’s proposed facility will not impact the aquifers.

    “If the community ‘just doesn’t want it,’ the 208 Plan is the venue to hear those concerns,” Thomas & Hutton senior Engineer Jeff deBessonet said. “A new state-of-the-art facility would open the door for the elimination of the older Ridgeway treatment system and provide a high-quality treatment facility to manage growth in Fairfield County.”

    County Administrator Jason Taylor said the county is going to great expense to be sure they have a system in place that will discharge the highest quality effluent into the creek.

    John Culbreth, with Thomas and Hutton engineering consultants, said at the Jan. 13 Fairfield county council meeting that the treated effluent discharged from Fairfield’s 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 frequently used to irrigate golf courses and crops and for other similar uses.

    Shawn 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 told his fellow Cedar Creek residents at a community meeting held at the community center in Cedar Creek in January. “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.”

    Davenport said that any Fairfield industries producing high levels of contaminants would be required by law to pre-filter those contaminants out of the water before it is sent to the Fairfield wastewater facility.

    While Thompson acknowledged that the proposed plant would use MBR tertiary treatment technology, he listed two links that he said referenced several failures of MBR technology

    Davenport pushed back, noting that the two references dealt primarily with failures that could be caused from neglected maintenance of the system.

    “If you don’t maintain an airplane, it will fall out of the sky,” Davenport said. “There are no references in either of these sources to downstream impacts on the environment, other facilities and jurisdictions as the Richland document suggests.”

    “We are proposing a treatment process that will be as good if not better than any other facility in the midlands,” Taylor said. “To deny us without looking at all the facts is short sited.  Our proposed facility is a win for all of us. Quality treatment is a win for the region it’s in and for the state.”

    Thompson also objected to the Fairfield facility because he said it will affect the permitting of Richland County’s Broad River wastewater treatment plant, resulting in Richland spending more money to treat their effluent.

    Thompson put it this way: Richland’s “concentration of impurities will have to be curtailed to minimize our impact on the environment. Removal of contaminants such as biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), ammonia, phosphates, and pathogens will necessitate the installation, operation, and continued maintenance of complex components if we are to maintain the same biological cumbering at the discharge of the Broad River WWTP.”

    Davenport said that’s actually a good thing. With the Big Cedar Creek discharging into Richland’s Broad River plant’s effluent, it would, he said, cause Richland to have to clean its effluent to a higher degree.

    Richland’s County Council Chair Paul Livingston wrote in his letter to the Bureau of Water that Fairfield has other options such as connecting to the City of Columbia or even expanding and/or upgrading the existing Winnsboro wastewater plant. Neither are viable options, Taylor said.

    “Winnsboro discharges into Jackson Creek which is already at capacity and therefore is not allowed by DHEC to take more effluent,” Taylor said. “And connecting to the City of Columbia is a financial impossibility for Fairfield.

    “The cost to the tax and rate payers would be insurmountable. It would cost twice as much money just to run lines and, in the end, we would not create new capacity or control our own capacity,” Taylor said. “After reviewing a number of different options, we have come to terms with discharging into cedar creek. All other options studied didn’t work for financial, permitting, or engineering reasons.”

    News Commentary: It’s What Fairfield Needs

    by Randy Bright

    A recent article on the front page of the Post and Courier highlighted the success of Fairfield County government’s aggressive efforts to develop Fairfield into a rural industrial powerhouse.

    The article helps to remind us the county is not sitting on its industrial laurels. In fact, the county is working to expand and update its water capacity to attract more industry, peripheral suppliers and other businesses. This will attract more jobs and more tax dollars.

    It will also improve living conditions to mitigate the county’s reliance on Columbia labor instead of Fairfield labor.

    The county’s plans to upgrade Fairfield’s aging and limited capacity sewer system is an imperative to improving Fairfield’s citizens’ future health, prosperity and general welfare. As if to highlight Fairfield’s needs, Duke University’s Kenan Institute for Ethics delivered the following message as part of their Investing in Rural Sewage Infrastructure for Economic Growth study in 2018:

    “Building water and wastewater infrastructure in rural communities across the U. S. creates jobs, stimulates investment from the private sector and increases a county’s tax base. For each dollar spent building water or wastewater infrastructure, about $15 are created in private investment and $14 [added] to the local property tax base.”

    Supplying rural areas with wastewater infrastructure has the potential to increase economic activity in a number of ways, including reducing out-migration of [county] residents and attracting industry to generate jobs, which would attract residents.

    Out-migration, which could partly be driven by a lack of wastewater services, further exacerbates the problem because it decreases the tax base on which a county can draw to provide such services. When this happens, counties either remain in the same position (at best) or their circumstances worsen because they cannot generate enough revenue to expand their wastewater infrastructure. Rural communities are thus trapped in a Catch-22.

    Nothing improves living conditions and retains population like an adequately functioning sewer system.

  • Panel plans wastewater upgrade

    WINNSBORO – A proposed capital projects sales tax to help finance a new wastewater treatment plant is expected to generate roughly $11.5 million over the next eight years, according to Fairfield County estimates.

    Particulars of how those funds should be allocated and administered rests with a newly created capital projects sales tax commission, which held its inaugural meeting April 15.

    The commission is tasked with developing a proposed referendum question, which Fairfield County Council must adopt by August 15 for it to appear on the November general election ballot.

    The need for a wastewater plant is simple – economic development, said County Administrator Jason Taylor.

    “A sewer plant is essentially a means to an end. That end is a better quality of life for our citizens, economic opportunity for our citizens,” Taylor said. “We have a declining population. We have to do something to turn that around, to make Fairfield County sustainable economically.”

    The proposed wastewater plant would be built at a location that hasn’t been disclosed because property negotiations are ongoing. Once the land is purchased, the county plans to build the wastewater plant there.

    If voters approve the referendum, the tax would go into effect in May 2021 and generate about $1.4 million per year in the first three years, with modest growth possible in future years, said C.D. Rhodes, an attorney assisting Fairfield County with the referendum.

    Rhodes spent most of last week’s meeting briefing committee members on the nuances of state law regarding capital projects sales taxes.

    The proposed tax would add a penny of sales tax to most items except groceries and medicine. Revenues raised could be used to leverage additional funding via general obligation bonds, Rhodes said.

    “I think in this case, that’s going to be a necessity,” he said. “It really is an excellent tool. It’s a flexible tool for counties to use to fund these large-scale [projects].”

    At least half of the state’s 46 counties use capital projects tax revenues to leverage bonds, and four to five others have done so in the past, Rhodes added

    “This really is on a statewide basis. It’s being seen as an essential tool to fund capital projects,” he said.

    Fairfield County officials say a new wastewater plant is imperative to luring new industry.

    Ty Davenport, the county’s economic development director, said Fairfield is one of five finalists to land a new industry.

    That industry, he said, anticipates using 30,000 gallons of wastewater per day, nearly matching the county’s current daily capacity of 34,000 gallons.

    “That will leave us with 4,000 gallons per day of capacity, which is basically zero,” Davenport said. “If we don’t expand our capacity in the county, economic development basically stops. If you lose a company, you’re going backwards.”

    Economic growth isn’t limited to big industry. Fairfield County officials note that housing growth is at a virtual standstill too without adequate wastewater service.

    “We can’t build a residential neighborhood in the county because it would be difficult to get sewer service. We want good housing stock and good places to live,” Davenport said.

    Tax commission members said they understood the need for economic development, but also wanted more details about the proposed wastewater project and process for funding it.

    To that end, they asked county staff to generate an FAQ list to proactively answer questions that may arise from the public.

    “We need to have sewer and water just to, at a bare minimum, interest people to come into Fairfield County,” said Commissioner Rick Gibson. “But I’d like to be just a little bit more informed before we push off from the shore.”

    Others also inquired about accountability, specifically asking for oversight of how the tax money gets spent.

    Rhodes said the S.C. Department of Revenue (DOR) provides administrative oversight to ensure tax money is spent as intended.

    He also said the judicial system provides another layer of accountability, referencing civil litigation challenging how Richland County’s road tax funds have been spent.

    “In the event that the county council attempts to spend this money in a way that’s outside the bounds of the act, then they would be violating the law, and they’d be subject to a lawsuit,” Rhodes said. “Richland County has been the poster child for playing fast and loose with [sales tax money].”

    Commissioners also asked if tax revenues could be posted online.

    Taylor said that shouldn’t be difficult since the DOR disburses funds quarterly. Rhodes concurred, saying the county and commission should act with transparency.

    “If you are not being transparent, if you’re not engaging the public, then someone out there is going to flush you out,” Rhodes said. “They are going to lambaste you on Facebook and make your life miserable. There is no hiding in this day and age. Being transparent and having lots of public engagement is an absolute necessity if you are going to be successful in one of these initiatives.”

    In other business, the group appointed Herb Rentz as chairman, Charlene Herring as vice-chair and Harriet Brown as secretary. Other members include Randy Bright, Rick Gibson and Russ Brown.

  • Council negotiating new WWTP site

    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.”

  • County to hold hearing on WWTP

    WINNSBORO – The commission of the Fairfield Joint Water and Sewer Authority will conduct a public hearing to receive public comment regarding the construction of a wastewater treatment plant with a planned discharge of treated effluent into Big Cedar Creek located in southern Fairfield County.

    The Fairfield Joint Authority will provide an update to the public on the status of the plant and its proposed location.

    All interested persons will be given an opportunity to be heard and express their views at the hearing. The hearing will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 25 at 6 p.m., in county council chambers at 350 Columbia Road in Winnsboro.

    For additional information, email Clerk to Council Patti Davis at patti.davis@fairfield.sc.gov