Blythewood Online 691

Tag: Water

  • County, Town Clear the Air on Water Debacle

    Deal for industry imminent; Sewer for Middle Six dead

    WINNSBORO – With a deal between Winnsboro and the City of Columbia for an additional 600,000 gallons of water a day marked ‘dead on arrival,’ the major players in the rush to provide water for the County’s new industrial parks met at the Midlands Technical College QuickJobs campus in Winnsboro April 17 to clear the air and hammer out a solution.

    “Ninety-eight percent of the problem is we have a lack of communication,” County Administrator Phil Hinely said a day after the meeting. “What was happening was our engineers were saying we need X amount of water and X amount of sewer, and the Town was saying ‘We don’t have that’.”

    But those “X’s,” Hinely said, represented the County’s need for a fully occupied, complete build-out of the parks, which could take as long as 20 years.

    “Instead of a full build-out, we’re actually asking for a smaller amount of water,” Hinely said. “Meanwhile, we will recruit industries that use less water – light manufacturing, assembly. Industries that don’t use water in their production, but only use water for bathrooms, sinks, drinking fountains and fire pressure.”

    Although the bulk of the meeting took place in executive session, it did not, however, take place in a sound-proof room, and the frustrations on both sides of the table were clearly audible in the Midlands Tech hallways. Winnsboro Mayor Roger Gaddy has made it no secret that the Town has hit an impasse with Columbia and has no intentions of signing a contract that would allow Columbia to decrease volume and increase rates without notice. Columbia would also not guarantee the quality of the water, nor was it prepared to take responsibility for Winnsboro’s water lines if they suffered damage as a result of a Columbia error. Gaddy has also never hidden his frustration with the County, which he said undertook the industrial park projects without consulting Winnsboro on their ability to provide water.

    The County, on the other hand, has been adamant that they indeed jumped through all necessary hoops to request water for the parks, and have the paper trail to support that claim.

    “It was a good airing of the soul,” John Fantry, special counsel to the Town of Winnsboro, said. “And we saw some pathways to moving forward. It got down to everybody knows what everybody else did, but how do we get moving forward? Plans (to provide water to the industrial parks) are forming.”

    David Ferguson, Chairman of Fairfield County Council, said the County wasn’t even aware the deal between Winnsboro and Columbia was dead until he read about it in The Voice, but said he was determined to do whatever it takes to get water to the parks.

    “If I have to go down and negotiate a contract, I will,” Ferguson said. “It’s not my job, but I’ll do it. If they can’t go down there and talk to someone like they’ve got some sense, then I’ll do it.

    “The dumbest thing we could do would be to bring in a 100-job plant in that park and tell them we can’t give them water,” Ferguson said. “That would be dumb on my part.”

    At Monday night’s County Council meeting, Ferguson announced another casualty from the April 17 water meeting – the future of sewer lines in the Middle Six community.

    On April 8, the County held a public hearing on an application for a Community Development Block Grant to install lines and provide sewer service to approximately 72 low- to moderate-income homes on Old Camden Road and Flora Circle. The County was prepared to pony up $50,000 in matching funds for the project, but after the April 17 meeting, that project is dead.

    “The Mayor (Gaddy) told us they were not interested in taking on that project for financial reasons,” Ferguson said. “They pretty well walked away from it. I know that was very concerning to Mr. (District 7 Councilman David) Brown. He had been trying for 14 years to get sewer service out there. They have terrible, terrible sewer problems there. I hate it worked out that way, but we don’t have the sewer system and we don’t have the water system, so we have to rely on what other people decide.”

  • County Considers Future of Water Supply

    Though the agenda was light, the Fairfield County Council had plenty to talk about during their June 11 evening meeting after County Administrator Phil Hinely mentioned a meeting held on June 8 with SCE&G, Winnsboro and Fairfield County representatives to discuss the possibility of using water from Lake Monticello in western Fairfield County. Water from Lake Monticello may help alleviate long-term water shortages that are facing the area. Lake Monticello is owned and managed by the South Carolina Electric and Gas Company and covers about 7,000 acres.

    “The distance from the lake to the Town’s reservoir is 12 miles,” Council Chairman David Ferguson said. “It is about the same distance as from the Broad River, but because of elevation, a lot more in pumping equipment would be needed for getting water from the Broad River. SCE&G said they could provide a million gallons a day, but the Town will have to buy the water from them. It sounds to me like it could be worked out, but it will cost $12 million.”

    Water is provided to Fairfield County residents by five water companies within Fairfield County: Winnsboro, Mitford, Ridgeway, Jenkinsville and Mid-County Water. Winnsboro also provides water to the Blythewood area of Richland County.

    “Someone needs to man up and call all the water entities to the table,” said Council member Carolyn Robinson. “If the Town is not going to do it, I think we should. We need a game plan and we need to bring every water provider to the table.”

    “Does the Town have a plan for the future of their water system?” asked Council member Mary Lynn Kinley.

    “The County has helped out with providing money for a study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,” Ferguson said. “If all five water purveyors came together, it would help for grant and loan purposes.”

    “The Town doesn’t have the finances to upkeep the water system or expand their lines,” said Council member David Brown. “We need to try to get all five water companies together with us to come together to come up with short- and long-term solutions. In the past, the USDA would help out with paying for infrastructure. At some point, the whole country will have this problem with aging water systems.”

    “I envision everyone coming together to provide the county’s water through one central water authority,” Robinson said. “Until we sit down at the table as a group, we will be sitting here again discussing this a year from now.”

    “The Mayor (Winnsboro Mayor Roger Gaddy) told me Mitford was doing fine and didn’t want to be a part of a water authority,” Ferguson said. “Jenkinsville didn’t want to participate either.”

    “Even though the County isn’t in the water business, it’s obvious that having five companies in one county is not optimal,” County Administrator Phil Hinely said. “But sometimes a crisis can help make a decision.”

    Ferguson said he will contact Mayor Gaddy to see what the Town’s future water plans are.

  • Deal to Bring Columbia Water to Blythewood Dodges Bullet

    The water hookup from the City of Columbia to the Town of Winnsboro water system has yet to begin, and another delay last week threatened to derail 10 months of negotiations between the two municipalities for months to come, a roadblock that could potentially have left Blythewood at the mercy of City of Columbia water rates.

    “We had a bump in the road on the engineering design,” John Fantry, special counsel to the Town of Winnsboro, said. “We had to go back and have words on that, and that put us a little behind on our hook-up date.”

    Fantry met with Blythewood Mayor Michael Ross and Town Administrator John Perry Monday afternoon to bring them up to date on issue, which Fantry said has been resolved. The project will move forward, Fantry said, once the amended agreement between Winnsboro and Columbia has been signed. Fantry said it was not clear if the adjusted agreement would require approval by Winnsboro Town Council.

    “We’ve had great cooperation from Mayor Ross and Mr. Perry,” Fantry said. “We may need a vote on the new letter, but as soon as it is signed, the City of Columbia is going ahead. Hopefully, there is nothing in this document that will put this thing astray.”

    In March, Winnsboro Town Council authorized Town Manager Don Wood to sign a Bulk Water Contract with the City of Columbia to temporally serve the Blythewood area with water. The agreement will allow Columbia to furnish water to Winnsboro water customers in Richland County, due to the drought conditions in Fairfield County, and the hookup between the entities was expected to take 60 to 90 days, as a new pumping station is needed, at the expense of the Town of Winnsboro. Winnsboro has been operating under an Extreme Drought Proclamation since February, and will continue to do so until water flows from a new Columbia connection, when a maximum 400,000 gallons per day of treated water is available to Winnsboro’s Richland County customers, mainly in the Blythewood community.

    “We were making progress with the water connection line,” said Wood. “Then we received notice from engineers for Columbia that the water pumping station had to be built to higher specifications. That would have cost us four times what was in the original contract and that DHEC had already approved.”

    “We didn’t want that setback,” Wood continued. “So I called and had some discussion with Columbia’s City Manager (Steve Gantt). He said he would sign the approval and get it in the mail. The hook up will still take 60 to 90 days.”

    Wood said a temporary pump will be used for the Columbia water connection. The rental pump will cost $6,980 for the first month, as that amount includes delivery, installation and disinfection. The cost after the first month is $4,400 per month.

    A water rate adjustment is being imposed on Winnsboro water customers due to the additional costs of water purchased from Columbia, diesel fuel costs, pump rental and legal/professional fees.

    At a special called Town Council meeting May 29, Council member Danny Miller made a motion that retail water rates be uniformly adjusted for the Town’s Fiscal Year 2012-2013 budget, so that both inside and outside town limit customers pay the same water rate increase of 22 percent. Council member Clyde Sanders seconded the motion. Mayor Roger Gaddy, Sanders and Miller voted to approve, Council member Jack Wilkes voted no, and Council member Bill Haslett was not present when the vote was taken.

    Minutes of the Town of Winnsboro’s Water, Sewer and Gas Committee meeting held May 22 state that Fairfield County Chairman David Ferguson, who attended the meeting, requested that the Town review the rate increases for the out-of-town customers, asking that the in-town and out-of-town rates be the same.

    A month ago, when finalizing the Town’s 2012-2013 budget, a water rate increase of 10 percent for all in-town residential retail customers and a 26 percent increase for all out-of-town residential retail customers was being considered by Town Council.

    “We got a lot of calls about the water rate increase,” said Wood. “We just had to adjust it to make the numbers work.”

    The rate increases could have been much higher, Fantry said, had Winnsboro been forced to conform to the requested design upgrades.

    “The design request would have cost us a tremendous amount of money and the rates would have been blown out of proportion,” Fantry said. “We got it worked out, but I was not sure that was going to happen.”

    James Denton contributed to this story.