Blythewood Online 691

Tag: Water Authority

  • Water authority becoming reality

    WINNSBORO – It’s been years since Fairfield county and municipal leaders first floated a concept of a regional water and sewer authority.

    Now that its composition has been finalized, the group plans to chart new waters as it attempts to define and fulfill its mission of enhancing economic development in Fairfield County.

    “Industry absolutely has to have basic infrastructure,” County Administrator Jason Taylor said. “The Town of Winnsboro and other entities need to come together because none of us can do it alone.”

    On Tuesday, County Council unanimously approved a resolution approving the final composition of the water authority.

    Winnsboro Town Council approved a similarly worded resolution last week.

    The resolutions passed by the Fairfield and Winnsboro councils shave the authority board from seven to five members, drawing two Fairfield County representatives – Council Chairman Neil Robinson and Taylor. Winnsboro Town Manager Don Wood and Gaddy.

    Kyle Crager, the authority’s fifth member, was jointly appointed by the county and town.

    Ensuring Fairfield County has sufficient infrastructure is particularly important as it relates to the mega site off I-77, where sufficient sewer capacity doesn’t exist.

    Taylor said new sewer lines potentially cost tens of millions of dollars more than water lines. The state recently awarded a $2 million grant for infrastructure design and prep work and though helpful, it’s only a fraction of what’s needed.

    “The Town [of Winnsboro] has done a wonderful job in getting water infrastructure in place so we have sufficient water capacity. However sewer is much more expensive.” Taylor said.

    As the authority board mulls ways to generate funds, other ideas were put forward at Monday night’s council meeting.

    Ridgeway resident Randy Bright repeated his call for a penny sales tax to fund water and sewer upgrades.

    “Infrastructure is an imperative,” Bright said. “If we had started this five years ago, we would already have $10 million that we could put forward to water and sewer to bring families, homes, industry new jobs and grow the economy.”

    Councilman Jimmy Ray Douglas proposed taxing agricultural real properties that receive a tax break from the state.

    Douglas proposed adding a $1 per acre tax on qualifying properties, which he said would generate $450,000 a year that could be applied to water and sewer expenses.

    “I have ag land that I own and I’m paying next to nothing,” he said. “Everyone else who has less than five acres is paying a lot more taxes. I feel like every [agriculturally exempt] acre in Fairfield County needs to have an extra dollar in taxes on it.”

    In South Carolina, agricultural real property is taxed at 4 percent of its fair market value. Non-agricultural property is taxed at 6 percent.

    For the owner of property valued at $100,000, a Fairfield County landowner receiving the tax break pays $814 less than owners not receiving it.

    Critics, however, say the exemptions unfairly benefit developers who claim the exemption on undeveloped property, most harvesting trees to technically qualify for the exemption.

    The 2 percent tax break isn’t permanent. Once the land use changes, the rate rolls back to 6 percent and landowners are responsible for paying the difference, according to state law.

  • County water authority explained

    WINNSBORO – An otherwise procedural vote to revise Fairfield County Council bylaws flowed into deeper discussion about how a proposed water and sewer authority will function.

    At its Oct. 8 meeting, the council voted 7-0 to approve a resolution to revise the bylaws addressing how authority board members are appointed.

    The county and town would each appoint three members to the seven-member authority.

    Both bodies would jointly approve the seventh member.

    In its early stages, the proposed authority is primarily a joint venture between Fairfield County and the Town of Winnsboro. The Mitford Rural Water District has expressed interest in participating, but nothing has been finalized.

    At the Oct. 8 meeting, Councilman Mikel Trapp asked several questions about the size of the proposed authority, how it would be constituted and who else is participating.

    “So is any other water company involved besides the Town of Winnsboro?” Trapp asked.

    “Initially we’re working with the town of Winnsboro. We do anticipate in the future to reach out to others,” County Administrator Jason Taylor replied. “But to form it initially, we’re working with Winnsboro because they’re the major provider of water and sewer in the county.”

    “So [there] is not going to be a board member coming from another water company,” Trapp asked.

    “We’re in discussions right now to look at one other water company,” Taylor said, identifying Mitford. Taylor said Mitford reached out to the county.

    Trapp later expressed concerns other water companies were being excluded.

    “I wasn’t making a statement that someone was trying to take over,” Trapp said. “I was concerned if we asked another member from another water company. It seemed like we’re picking one over the others.”

    Earlier this month, the Jenkinsville Water Company’s leader expressed concerns about the authority in an interview with The Voice.

    “They said they wanted ‘X’ amount of dollars for you to join a water authority, but they [haven’t said] what it’s going do for you, how it’s going to help, what it’s going to do or anything else,” said JWC president Greg Ginyard.

    Taylor said the proposed authority boils down to economic development and industrial recruitment.

    Aside from preliminary talks with Mitford, the proposed authority is primarily a Fairfield County and Winnsboro venture. Participation is not compulsory, Taylor said.

    “The genesis of this is primarily because our economic development sites, our industrial sites, are served by the Town of Winnsboro,” Taylor said. “We need to make sure those industrial sites are more than just land, but they have the water and sewer so they can attract the industry.”

    Later, during a different discussion, county officials said functioning water and sewer services are vital in economic development efforts.

    “We’ve got to get our act together. We need to get water in the ground. We need to get sewer in the ground in order to grow,” Ty Davenport, the county’s director of economic development, said. “Our capacity is 34,000 gallons a day. We should have a minimum of 800,000 gallons a day, probably a million gallons. At the [Fairfield County] mega site, we’ve got to have a million gallons. We’ve got a ways to go there.”

    Council Chairman Billy Smith said he’d like to see additional water providers join, noting it could shave costs for customers.

    “I’d love to see it so we could have everybody in the agreement if we possibly can and take advantage of economies of scale,” Smith said. “They [water providers] sell water back and forth back to one another. If we could get everybody under one roof,  that would be a good thing for the citizens of the county and help lower their rates over time.”

  • Everything on the Table for Water Authority

    WINNSBORO – Representatives of Mid-County Water and the four local governments (Fairfield County Council and the towns of Winnsboro, Ridgeway and Blythewood) exploring the possibility of forming a regional water authority met Wednesday afternoon at Midlands Technical College in Winnsboro to discuss the framework of the project. While much of the discussion, chaired by Winnsboro Mayor Roger Gaddy, revolved around meeting procedures and proposed bylaws, the topic with the most bearing on the future of the authority was ownership of the water system itself.

    “What is going to be the system that the regional water authority wants to own?” Margaret Pope, an attorney with the Pope Zeigler law firm advising the committee, asked. “I believe the Town of Winnsboro has the only water treatment plant of all the members here.”

    Gaddy told the committee that, as far as the Town of Winnsboro was concerned, all options for the water plant were on the table.

    “From the Town of Winnsboro’s standpoint, nothing is set in stone,” Gaddy said. “Winnsboro has been supplying the water, but it’s getting to the point where it’s become so expensive, and with future costs we know that’s something Winnsboro is not going to be able to absorb by itself.”

    Gaddy said Winnsboro has a preliminary agreement with South Carolina Electric and Gas (SCE&G) to draw up to 1 million gallons of water a day from Lake Monticello, but getting that water into Winnsboro will be expensive. That kind of expense, he said, is exactly the kind of thing a regional water authority could help cover.

    “You’ve still got to run the water to the reservoir,” Gaddy said. “That’s going to cost probably $8 – $12 million. If you’re going to try to get some funding for it from the federal government or other special funding, they look more favorably on a water authority that represents Mid-County, Blythewood, Ridgeway and Winnsboro. That’s going to carry a lot more clout.

    “We don’t necessarily have any proprietary feeling that we’ve got to own the water plant or we’ve got to be the wholesale provider,” Gaddy continued. “My feeling is that if the group doesn’t want that, that’s fine. If they want us to be the wholesale provider, that’s fine too. I don’t want anybody walking into this meeting thinking the Town of Winnsboro has got a pre-set agenda of how we expect this thing to look and what we want out of it.”

    Gaddy said the water plant is in need of upgrades, which represent an additional expense, and the Town is also saddled with the upkeep of the entire system that feeds Blythewood, Ridgeway and Mid-County.

    “Even though we’ve spent millions of dollars on water, there’s about a 1 percent profit margin,” Gaddy said. “We’re not making a killing off water.”

    David Ferguson, Chairman of Fairfield County Council, said the County was not necessarily interested in becoming a water provider, but wants to ensure water is available for County economic development projects now and in the future.

    “With the investments we’ve made (in the new industrial park) on Peach Road, we need to be proactive,” Ferguson said. “That’s what the County’s looking at. The distribution and that kind of stuff, we’re really not interested in it. We have property on Highway 200 and I-77, we have that industrial park (on Peach Road), and as soon as we get that one up and where it needs to be that will not be the only park in the county. We’ve got to know we’ve got the resources at Highway 200 and 77 to do the same thing we’ve planned to do on Peach Road.

    “I don’t think we did a real good job of getting to this place,” Ferguson said, “but we need to do a good job moving forward.”

    Mid-County Water has yet to convert their governing body to a public entity, a transition necessary before officially joining any water authority. The other governing bodies represented on the steering committee have yet to pass resolutions necessary for joining. The Town of Ridgeway has held public hearings on the matter, but has thus far not held a vote.

    The committee also discussed how the existence of the authority might affect future water rates for consumers.

    “That depends on what the water authority wants to buy,” Gaddy said, referring to Winnsboro’s treatment plant. “If they want to buy everything, the rates will go up quite a bit. They will go up no matter what. It’s just a matter of degree.”

  • Fairfield County Considers Water Authority

    With a deadline for committing to a proposed countywide water authority a little more than a month away, Fairfield County Council held a special called meeting Aug. 15 to weigh the benefits of participating and the risks of turning their backs on the effort.

    Under the proposed plan for a water authority, members will be expected to contribute $5,000 to a Charter Committee bank account to raise capital for incorporating costs. If at least $15,000 hasn’t been raised by the Sept. 30 deadline, the entire project goes up in smoke.

    “If we haven’t raised that money by the September deadline, then the Town will probably have to look at phasing distributors off the system,” John Fantry, special counsel to the Town of Winnsboro, said earlier this month. “It is a ‘pay to play’ system. If Winnsboro is the only one putting up any money to do this, if other people aren’t committed, then we’re going to have to take care of ourselves, and that means cutting people off of wholesale water.”

    County Councilman David Brown, who said he has, in the past, been a proponent of the County establishing its own water and sewer service, said a water authority appears to be a much more viable option.

    “How can we justify speeding millions of dollars with no customer base, other than the industrial park?” Brown asked. “How can we go out and tell our constituents were going to spend $100 million on water and sewer when we don’t have a single customer? That’s my concern with us getting in the water business.”

    “I suggest we go along with it,” Brown added.

    Council vice chairman Dwayne Perry said he was concerned with the apparent lack of participation by other water providers in the county.

    “If we’re going to make this a partnership, we’ve got two purveyors who are not at the table, in Jenkinsville and Mitford,” Perry said. “If we’re going to look at growing this entire county, we need to be joined as partners. If we don’t have all the stakeholders at the table, I think we’re missing a great opportunity.”

    The Town of Ridgeway and Mid-County Water are the only two water providers to have so far expressed any positive interest in joining the Town of Winnsboro in forming the Regional Water Supply Authority for Fairfield County. The Jenkinsville Water Company (JWC) purchases approximately 50 percent of its water from Mid-County, which in turn buys water from Winnsboro; but Gregrey Ginyard, president of the JWC Board of Trustees, said two weeks ago that his company is not interested in joining the authority.

    “At this time, we don’t feel like that would be beneficial for us,” Ginyard said. “We can’t see turning the Jenkinsville Water Company over to someone else.”

    Ginyard added that he was not overly concerned about the possibility of being cut off from Winnsboro water.

    “We’re working on other water sources,” Ginyard said. “We’re looking at putting in more wells and we’re applying for grants for a treatment plant so we can pull water out of the river.”

    The Mitford Water Company said they would like to have joined in the project, but were locked into a contract with Chester County for the next 30 years or more. Mitford Water serves approximately 900 customers in Fairfield County.

    David Ferguson, Council Chairman, suggested Council ask Margaret Pope, of the Pope Zeigler law firm, to come before Council and present on an overview of how a water authority would work and what the benefits would be. Pope’s firm is assisting Santee Cooper and the Town of Winnsboro in forming the proposed water authority.

    “If we don’t get in on this, we’re shot in the foot,” Brown said. “There’s got to be some mechanism (to get water throughout the county). It’s going to either be through the water authority or we are going to have to get into the water business, and how much is that going to cost?”