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TWSA to use grant funds on sewer lines
By Carey King
Sewer lines in Jackson County are about to get an overhaul the likes of which they've never seen, thanks to a $400,000 grant Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority recently received from the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center.
"This is the most this community has ever spent to rehabilitate its sewer lines," said TWSA director Hugh Montgomery.
The grant dollars come from Clean Water Bonds state citizens passed in 1998. The money will be used to clean out and patch up pipes that carry wastewater through Sylva's downtown and from Cullowhee to TWSA's Treatment Plant No. 1 on North River Road.
TWSA received the grant during the next-to-last funding cycle such allocations were available.
"We were down on the wire to try to get access to these funds," said Montgomery, noting that grants for water system improvements have slowly dried up since the 1980s. When the federal Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, he said, it was easy to get federal dollars for sewer projects, but ever since, funding sources have become more and more limited.
"While these things were put in the ground in the '60s and '70s with federal money, the maintenance of them is pretty much going to fall on the backs of local people," Montgomery said. Grants currently available almost always require some sort of match with local funds, he said.
TWSA will put up a match of $600,000 for the sewer line upgrade, a "infiltration and inflow" project that aims to keep wastewater inside the pipes, and everything else out.
"There's some holes in our lines. There's a lot of water getting in our lines," Montgomery said.
Work is already under way on Mill Street in downtown Sylva to clean 2,400 feet of 8-inch sewage pipe. TWSA employees have pulled out about a ton of gravel from the system, and are beginning to send television cameras inside to see places where pipe joints have settled or separated, Montgomery said.
That work is leading up to a total rehabilitation of the line next summer, a project that is expected to take up to $300,000 of funds. While TWSA employees are doing the bulk of the prep work for the improvements, an engineer is expected to be selected by March to take over, with a construction contract awarded by June, and work completed by September.
The nearly six miles of 24-inch line that runs between Cullowheee and the treatment plant located halfway between Webster and Dillsboro is the project's other target. TWSA workers have installed flow meters on the pipe and are monitoring them closely to see where water's getting in or out, Montgomery said.
An engineer for that section's rehabilitation should be selected by next September, with bids going out in March 2006, and work completed by June of that year.
That portion of the project will also include installation of two siphons to increase flow capacity at points where the line crosses the Tuckaseigee River, Montgomery said.
Both sets of improvements are long overdue, Montgomery said, but since "there's nothing sexy about a sewer line," wastewater problems tend to take the back burner to more popular issues. Municipalities across the state are facing similar upkeep problems due to years of wastewater system neglect, he said.
"These lines are living, breathing things in that there's always flow in them," Montgomery said. "We have to take care of them, for our kids and grandkids both."
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