Friday, December 28, 2007

Written 12/28/2007

Citizen Involvement Could "Taint" the Bidding Process

Back in early September, when an analysis of the bidding process for the upgrade of the Rocky Branch sewage plant raised a number of questions about procedures, Oconee County officials promised to modify the process and rebid the project.

County officials, who rebid the upgrade work for the sewage plant on November 16, did change the process, though not in the way they indicated they would in September.

The changes are designed to make it impossible for anyone to do the analysis that revealed the questions about procedures that were raised in September.

The County is refusing to open up the bids for public scrutiny and refusing to allow the public to observe or see records of the evaluation of those bids.

County Administrative Officer Alan Theriault has determined that "The mere fact that a member of the general public is in anyway involved may taint and compromise the entire process," according to an e-mail message he sent me on December 21, 2007.

Theriault elaborated in an e-mail message of December 26, 2007, that "The proposals will be available to the public at such time as the final award of the contract is made or the project is terminated or abandoned."

The Board of Commissioners is expected to let a contract for the $8-10 million project in January. The project will result in the upgrade of the sewage plant under a permit granted by the State Environment Protection Devision allowing for the discharge of 1 million gallons per day of treated wastewater into Barber Creek.

Despite what Theriault wrote on December 26, the recommended bid, but not the competing bids or the details of the evaluation, must be presented in an open meeting. The Board of Commissioners can go into executive session and exclude the public for specified reasons, such as to discuss the future acquisition of real estate or to discuss or deliberate upon personnel issues involving a public officer or employee. Discussing bids is not listed as a justification for a closed session.

State law allows the County to close access to the bidding process, but it does not require it to do so. So the decision to close the process this time is a major change in procedures.

"I...hope you understand that we must abide by the non-disclosure requirements of the competitive sealed proposal (RFP) process," Theriault wrote in his e-mail of December 21, 2007.

Neither the first nor the second RFP stated that there were any "non-disclosure requirements." Georgia Code (50-18-72 (a)(6)(B) states: "Public disclosure shall not be required for records that are: Engineers’ cost estimates and pending, rejected, or deferred bids or proposals..."

In response to an open records request I filed on August 16, 2007, the County granted full access to the submitted bids in the first round of competition and to the records of the evaluation.

As I reported in my blog of September 2, 2007, then County Utility Department Director Chris Thomas recommended that the contract go to Jordan Jones & Goulding, with headquarters in Norcross but a branch office on South Milledge avenue in Athens. JJ&G submitted a bid of $680,580.

Keck & Wood Inc. of Duluth had the low bid of $643,000, and Carter & Sloope, located in Butler’s Crossing in Oconee County, bid $690,000.

JJ&G had partnered with Precision Planning Inc. (PPI) of Lawrenceville in preparing the Design Development Report (DDR) the County submitted to the EPD with its application for its Rocky Branch discharge permit.

JJ&G also was in charge of construction of the existing Rocky Branch facility, which sprays treated sewage water onto hayfields on site and does not have a permit to discharge into any stream.

Thomas had asked two people from PPI to evaluate the three bids submitted on July 26 and included their scores for the bids in reaching his decision to recommend JJ&G.

The analysis of the September bids showed that bidders were given a side tip after the initial Request for Proposals was written. The tip, given at the a pre-submittal meeting of interested bidders, indicated that the County was interested in receiving bids that specified alternatives to the membrane filtration system that was specified in the formal bid documents.

JJ&G proposed as alternatives to the membrane filtration system an "oxidation ditch process" and a "fill-and-decant activated sludge system." Neither can treat water to the level possible with the membrane filtration system, according to the proposal.

After the September 4 meeting, the County announced it would start the bid process over. As I explained in my posting of September 10, 2007, Theriault sent me an e-mail message on September 7, saying he plans "to meet with Utility Department personnel in the next several days to discuss particulars of moving forward and develop a rough time-line."

Theriault said he expected the initial step to be a "Request for Qualifications" advertisement "to identify design firms or teams that have specific experience with membrane filtration wastewater systems and that would be interested in this project."

There is no evidence the County ever did that.

Advertisements for the new Request for Proposals appeared in The Oconee Enterprise on November 21 and 29 and again on December 6 and 13. As with the earlier bid, interested parties were required to participate in a pre-submittal conference. That conference was held on December 4, making the last two advertisements in the Enterprise meaningless, at least in terms of soliciting proposals.

Nine firms attended the conference. Deadline for filling a proposal was December 20, and the County listed the names of bidders (minus identifying addresses) that day. The nine listed were: O'Brien & Gere, Wiedeman & Singleton, Inc., Carter & Sloope, Inc., HDR, Inc., HSF Engineering, Inc., Stantec Consulting Services, Inc., Pendergrass & Associates, Inc./Woodard & Curran, Inc., Stevenson & Palmer Engineering, Inc., and Brown & Caldwell.

That is all the County intends for its citizens to know until the Board of Commissioners votes to spend citizen money on the engineering design and support contract in January. The contract will probably be for between $600,000 and $700,000, based on the last bids.

The Request for Proposals issued on November 16 (and made available to me by PPI, which handled the distribution in response to inquiries) is identical to the June 29, 2007, RFP in stipulating that a "Selection Committee appointed by the Oconee County Board of Commissioners" will evaluate the submitted proposals.

The Board did not appoint the Selection Committee in June, and it did not appoint the Selection Committee for the November bidding.

At the December 18 meeting of the BOC, Jimmy Parker of PPI announced that he was putting together a committee consisting of the head of the County Utility Department, the head of the County Public Works Department, Theriault and some number of people from PPI.

"What we generally do is allow everybody to rate those independently so we don’t skew the results," Parker said. "Then we’ll meet to compile and sort of average the results, total those up and get a consensus of the committee on a recommendation back to this Board."

Commissioner Jim Luke asked Parker "to notify us when that meeting will take place in case any of us want to join."

"Yes sir, be glad to," Parker said.

That agreement does not appear in the draft minutes of the meeting posted on the County’s web site on December 27.

I sent an e-mail to Board of Commissioners Chairman Melvin Davis, to current Utility Department Interim Director John Hatcher, and to Luke shortly after the BOC meeting asking to be notified of the review committee meeting. I also wrote that evening to Davis and Hatcher asking for access to the bids as soon as they were submitted.

Theriault’s e-mail to me of December 21 was in response to both of those requests.

"I assume that your request concerning the meeting notification involves your desire to attend that meeting," Theriault wrote. "I am afraid that we must respectfully decline."

Nothing I can find in Georgia’s Sunshine Laws allows for denial of notification of a scheduled meeting. Participants in a meeting can vote to go to a closed session, but only after giving notice of the meeting and under limited circumstances.

Thomas, then Utility Department director, handled the evaluation of the three bids submitted back in July. No mention was made of a meeting for that evaluation.

The actual RFP issued in November is much like the RFP issued in June, but the more recent RFP asks bidders to submit a base design and an alternate design. The base design should follow the Design Development Report submitted to the Georgia EPD as part of the application for the permit to discharge treated sewage water into Barber Creek.

The alternate design calls for membrane filtration as a tertiary step, rather than the use of a membrane biological reactor.

The implications of these design options for the quality of water that will be produced by the plant cannot be known without a review of the bids, and that is precisely what the County has said it will not allow.

Another change in the RFP is the specification that the County plans to use Construction Management at Risk to let the actual bid for building of the plant. Such a procedure requires the construction manager to complete the work at a fixed maximum cost.

The November RFP also specifies that construction of the plant should begin in October of 2008 and that the plant should be operational–and begin discharging into Barber Creek–in July of 2009.

Despite the lag in time between the two RFPs and the small number of changes, PPI had to issue two addenda to the RFP, one on December 10 and the other on December 18, or two days before the filing deadline. The addenda deleted items from the original RFP, offered clarifications, and added requirements.

I asked Theriault for updates on the rebidding process in September, October and November. In each case, he informed me he had nothing by way of new information to provide me.

In the end, it seems it took the County three months to make two big changes in the bidding.

The first was to allow an alternative to the membrane filtration technology proposed to the EPD when the County received the permit for the discharge into Barber Creek.

The second was to close citizens out of the review process so they cannot know the implications of that change.

***

Here are the e-mail addresses of the members of the Board of Commissioners:

Melvin Davis, (Chairman), mdavis@oconee.ga.us
Margaret Hale, margarethale@oconee.ga.us and marghale@aol.com
Chuck Horton, chorton@oconee.ga.us
Jim Luke, jluke@oconee.ga.us
Don Norris, dnorris@oconee.ga.us.

The telephone number for all of them is 706 769-5120.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Written 12/16/2007

Rocky Branch on BOC Agenda Again

The upgrade to the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant, which will result in the discharge of up to 1 million gallons per day of treated wastewater into Barber Creek, is back on the agenda of the Board of Commissioners for its meeting on Tuesday, December 18.

The BOC will be updated by Precision Planning’s Jimmy Parker and Oconee Utility Department Director John Hatcher on "Wastewater Planning and RFP Update."

The deadline for submission of proposals for the upgrade of the Rocky Branch plant is 5 p.m. the day before the BOC meeting.

In addition, the BOC will hear from Parker and Hatcher about "water resources" at the Tuesday meeting.

I’ll also ask for the third time that the Board pass a resolution drafted by the Georgia Water Coalition. The resolution asks the Georgia General Assembly to fund water resource study and monitoring and to oppose interbasin transfers of water. The Board has refused to take any action on the resolution despite two earlier requests by me that it do so.

After promising to follow a different course of action, the County essentially reissued the Request for Proposal it had issued in June for engineering and design work on the Rocky Branch sewage plant. That request had produced three bids, and the Utility Department wanted to give the project to Jordan Jones and Goulding.

JJ&G was not the low bidder and had been involved in initial planning work for the plant. Precision Planning, which had partnered with JJ&G on County projects, also participated in the review that led to selection of the JJ&G bid.

JJ&G, on a tip from the County, proposed that the County abandon its commitment to membrane filtration for the plant and use a more primitive treatment method. That method cannot meet the standards that membrane filtration is capable of meeting.

The BOC refused to go along with the recommendation of the Utility Department after I pointed out the nature of the bidding and review. You can read details of that meeting in my posting of 9/10/2007.

Alan Theriault, administrative officer for the County, sent me an e-mail message on September 7, three days after the Board of Commissioners (BOC) voted to upgrade the Rocky Branch plant, saying he expected the initial step in the rebidding process to be a "Request for Qualifications" advertisement "to identify design firms or teams that have specific experience with membrane filtration wastewater systems and that would be interested in this project."

Although I have asked Theriault twice since that September message to keep me updated on discussions about Rocky Branch, he did not inform me about the new bidding for the plant upgrade.

Advertisements for the project appeared in The Oconee Enterprise on November 21 and 29 and again on December 6 and 13. The advertisements are nearly identical to those used for the earlier bid.

As with the earlier bid, interested parties were required to participate in a pre-submittal conference. That conference, according to the advertisements, was held on December 4, making the last two advertisements in the Enterprise meaningless, at least in terms of soliciting proposals.

My efforts to get the BOC to pass the Georgia Water Coalition resolution have produced nothing. The issue is the interbasin transfer prohibition, Chairman Melvin Davis has confirmed.

The County has a permit for an interbasin transfer for the Hard Labor Creek reservoir project. Water will be pumped out of the Oconee River basin and discharged, at least partially, into the Ocmulgee River basin. In addition, Oconee County sold water to Walton County for many years, and that water came out of the Oconee River basin. Walton County straddles the Oconee and Ocmulgee basins.

If the County would discuss the Water Coalition resolution, its stand on future interbasin transfers might become known. Even if the County does not pass that part of the resolution dealing with interbasin transfers, it could pass the other part, dealing with funding for the study of water issues.

My blog posting of 11/23/2007 explains the resolution.

By the way, if you missed the lead story in today’s Athens Banner-Herald about a broken promise to citizens in Clarke and Olgethorpe Counties about a landfill, you might want to take a look. It tells how important it is for citizens to watch what government officials do, and how hard it is to control those actions.

If you can attend the meeting tomorrow night, please do so. It always helps to have a crowd.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Written 11/23/2007

Georgia Water Coalition Petition

The Board of Directors of Friends of Barber Creek has asked the Oconee County Board of Commissioners to support a resolution drafted by the Georgia Water Coalition to respond to the current drought crisis.

Here is the text of a letter I sent to Mr. Melvin Davis, chairman of the Oconee County BOC, asking for BOC support.

November 23, 2007

Mr. Melvin Davis, Chairman
Oconee County Board of Commissioners
Oconee County Courthouse
23 N. Main Street
Watkinsville, GA 30677

Dear Mr. Davis:

The Georgia Water Coalition, a group of individuals and organizations working to ensure that the waters of the state continue to belong to the people of the state, has drafted a resolution regarding water policy in Georgia. Friends of Barber Creek, one of the 149 Georgia Water Coalition partners, is asking the Board of Commissioners of Oconee County to pass this resolution on behalf of the citizens of Oconee County. A copy of the resolution is below.

The purpose of the resolution is to guarantee fair apportionment of Georgia's waters to all portions of the state. This resolution asks the General Assembly to provide full funding for water planning on a regional and state level. It also asks for legislation prohibiting future transfers of water across the 14 river basins in the state.

The ongoing drought has made citizens of Oconee County and of the state aware of the precious nature of our water resources. The response to the drought indicates that the state currently lacks the information it needs to ensure that this resource will be managed sustainably in the future to balance the needs of natural systems, downstream economies, and other uses such as recreation, power generation and industry.

Because much of the population growth to date has occurred in the northern part of the state, where numerous rivers have their headwaters, water historically has been transferred from one river basin to another to meet increasing human demands. These transfers unfairly rob the donor basin of water that should flow downstream to support other economies and uses. More and larger transfers may occur in the future if this pattern is not halted by the legislature.

Through its partners, the Georgia Water Coalition is presenting this resolution to governing authorities across the state. The following entities already have passed the resolution: Putnam County, LaGrange, Liberty County, Chatham County, Rome, Floyd County, City of Tybee, Brantley County, City of Metter, Evans County, Hart County, City of Lavonia, City of Hartwell, Bryan County, Troup County, Ware County and the Satilla Regional Water and Sewer Authority.

The Board of Directors of Friends of Barber Creek urges the Oconee County Board of Commissioners to pass this resolution expeditiously so Oconee County can offer its support for the Georgia Water Coalition’s efforts to ensure that water is managed fairly for all Georgians, with the interest of all citizens, businesses and farms in mind.

I will attend the Board of Commissioners Agenda Meeting on November 27 to ask you either to pass this resolution or schedule it for discussion at your December 4, 2007 meeting.

Sincerely,



Lee B. Becker
President, on behalf of the Board of Directors of Friends of Barber Creek

Lee B. Becker, President (1050 Scott Terrace)
Tim Price, Vice President (1240 Hollow Creek Lane)
Karen Kimbaris, Secretary-Treasurer (1031 Willow Ridge)
Joe Block, Member (1281 Founders Lake Drive)



Mailing Address for Friends of Barber Creek:
1050 Scott Terrace
Athens, GA 30606 (Oconee County)
Tel. 706 548-1525


RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, there is increased pressure on the surface and ground water resources within the State of Georgia, but a lack of information as to the natural quantities of water in its rivers and aquifers, and

WHEREAS, the Oconee County Board of Commissioners believes that the surface and ground waters of the state should continue to be managed in the public interest and in a sustainable manner to protect natural systems and meet human and economic needs, and

WHEREAS, protection and restoration of water resources requires regional water planning, based on assessments of watersheds, river basins, and aquifers, that is tied to implementation, including a comprehensive management process, and

WHEREAS, protection of river basins must be strengthened to reflect scientific knowledge and respect natural systems, and

WHEREAS, downstream communities in Georgia rely on certain flow levels in river basins for current and future economic development, recreation, and environmental quality, and

WHEREAS, decisions on new water supplies for growing communities should recognize that efficiency and the wise use of current resources are the best course for taxpayers, and

WHEREAS, transferring water from one basin to another can adversely affect downstream communities and unfairly redistribute economic growth,

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Oconee County Board of Commissioners supports and adopts the principles outlined above and urges the General Assembly of Georgia to fully fund comprehensive regional and statewide water planning and monitoring,

AND, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the Oconee County Board of Commissioners urges the General Assembly of Georgia to pass a statute that prevents the transfer of water from one basin to another to the detriment of current and future downstream economic growth or to the detriment of the natural health of the stream.

Duly adopted the _____day of __________, 2007.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Written 10/17/2007

Rare Chance to See Elder Mill, Other Sites

Oconee County residents will get a rare chance on Saturday to tour a part of southern Oconee County that, to date, has been spared from development and that contains a number of important historical sites.

Unfortunately, the area is threatened, and the Board of Commissioners has yet to take any action to protect it.

The Elder family will be directing people to family sites in the County, such as the Elder Mill Covered Bridge on Rose Creek, Elder Mill, and two family cemeteries. Maps for the sites will be available Saturday at the Elder shop, between the courthouse and the Haygood House on Main Street in Watkinsville.

Watkinsville is the site of the Saturday’s Oconee Fall Festival, and the Elder family will hold a reunion at the Watkinsville shop. The public is invited.

Cokey Elder, a senior member of the family, said the mill, located on Rose Creek near the covered bridge, will be open for viewing as part of the tour.

Only the bridge, which carries limited traffic across Rose Creek on Elder Bridge Road just south of SR15, is owned by the County. The surrounding land and the mill are in private hands.

The BOC discussed creating a park that would include the bridge and at least some surrounding property in a closed-door session on September 4. No details of the discussion or of the proposed park have been released to the public.

After returning to regular session from the closed-door discussions on September 4, the BOC voted to continue to pursue a grant from the Georgia Land Conservation Program to help create the park, but the BOC refused to allocate any funds to support the application.

Following that closed-door session, according to the minutes, "On motion by Commissioner (Chuck) Horton and second by Commissioner (Jim) Luke, the Board voted unanimously to continue with the GLCP grant request for the proposed Elder Mill Park as originally submitted, providing no monetary funding obligation from the County, only in-kind funding."

According to the historical marker at the Elder Bridge, it was built in 1897 and carried the Watkinsville-Athens road across Calls Creek, which flows from Watkinsville to the Middle Oconee River north of Watkinsville.

The 99-foot-long bridge was moved to its present location in 1924. The bridge is made entirely of wood, and its planks are held together with wooden pegs.

The grist mill, just downstream from the bridge, was built about 1900 and stopped operating in 1941, according to the marker at the bridge. It contains many of the original inner workings of the mill.

Rose Creek between the bridge and mill flows over large rocks, creating a shoal, and is surrounded by large hardwoods.

Some of the key tracts of land surrounding the bridge and mill are designated by the County as protected in the proposed new land use map. The County largely ignores its current land use map, and it could ignore the new one should it be adopted.

Any development along Elder Bridge Road or Saxon Road would be a threat to the bridge, as it can handle very limited traffic.

Some of the property is certainly attractive for development. A subdivision already has been laid out on SR 15 between Watkinsville and the site.

According to Georgia open meeting laws, the BOC was allowed to go into a secret session if it was "discussing the future acquisition of real estate."

The BOC is still required to prepare "minutes of such a meeting; provided, however, the disclosure of such portions of the minutes as would identify real estate to be acquired may be delayed until such time as the acquisition of the real estate has been completed, terminated, or abandoned or court proceedings with respect thereto initiated."

According to the law, the minutes of the closed session "shall reflect the names of the members present and the names of those voting for closure, and that part of the minutes shall be made available to the public as any other minutes."

If the closed meeting is devoted only in part to discussion of land acquisition, "any portion of the meeting not subject to any such exception, privilege, or confidentiality shall be open to the public, and the minutes of such portions not subject to any such exception shall be taken, recorded, and open to public inspection."

The law states that "Any person knowingly and willfully conducting or participating in a meeting in violation of this chapter shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be punished by a fine not to exceed $500.00."

So far, the County has not released the minutes of the closed session, nor has it indicated who joined the BOC in the session.

Monday, October 08, 2007

Written 10/08/2007

Water on the Mind

The drought seems finally to have focused almost everyone’s attention on water, or the lack of it.

Consider the following:

*The local papers contain stories nearly every day on the possibility that Oconee and its neighboring counties will run out of water before the end of the year and on the actions local officials have taken in the hopes that the water lasts at least that long.

*Local partners of the state-wide Georgia Water Coalition will hold a meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday (October 11) at the Foundry Park Inn Ballroom, 295 E. Dougherty St., in Athens to discuss the state’s first-ever effort to create a water plan for Georgia.

*Oconee County officials are using the drought to justify the County’s decision to join with Walton County to build the $350 million Hard Labor Creek reservoir in Walton County.

The discussion hasn’t focused much attention yet on what local officials could have done to prevent the current crisis or on whether the actions now being taken will prevent such a crisis from occurring again in the future.

An editorial in the October 7 issue of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, however, has started pointing fingers.

The villain is a mismatch between the water resources of the state and the demands being placed on those resources by development, according to the editorial.

"Georgians can no longer pretend that unchecked growth and the profligate water consumption it fosters can continue indefinitely without exacting a heavy toll," according to the editorial.

The current crisis, the editorial argues, is partly the result of the state’s "unwillingness to recognize the impact of our actions on the state’s limited water resources."

The Hard Labor Creek reservoir project is an interesting case to consider. This reservoir is not designed to address current needs, but rather to provide for future development in the County.

Hard Labor Creek was projected to cost Oconee County $45.6 million in January of 2007, $48.2 million on September 4, when the intergovernmental contract was approved by the Oconee County Board of Commissioners, and $49.8 million on October 4 when the BOC voted to approve a bond contract to cover its portion of the costs.

Only Commissioner Chuck Horton voted against the bond motion, which actually authorized up to $66 million in bond sales, in case the current estimate of $49.8 million is too low. That figure includes $2.9 million Oconee County owes Walton County for money already spent.

The County didn’t even know how much it owed Walton County for past spending when the BOC approved the intergovernmental agreement a month earlier. And the figure, the BOC was told on October 4 by County Attorney Dan Haygood, is still not based on audited expenses, so it could go higher.

Charlie Baugh, president of Citizens for Oconee’s Future and a former Internal Revenue Service auditor, estimates that at 4.4% interest, the County would actually pay $119 million over 30 years for the $66 million, should it borrow that amount.

On September 4, Commissioner Margaret Hale joined Horton in opposing the intergovernmental agreement. Board of Commission Chairman Melvin Davis had to break the tie by joining Commissioners Jim Luke and Don Norris in supporting the agreement.

Whether the final cost is $49.8 million, $66 million, or something even higher, it is supposed to be paid for by growth in the demand for water in the county resulting from future development. Specifically, the demand for water must growth at the rate of at least 8% per year to pay for the reservoir. At present, the County’s population is growing at less than 3% per year.

Most of the water the Oconee County Utility Department sells to its current customers comes from another reservoir, on Bear Creek in Jackson County. Despite the lingering drought, officials from the four counties that run the reservoir–Clarke, Barrow, Jackson and Oconee–did not take dramatic steps to save water until September 13.

On that date, the Upper Oconee Basin Water Operations Committee voted to issue a total ban on outdoor watering effective four days later.

The Committee was just a step ahead of the state. Dr. Carol A. Couch, director of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, banned outdoor residential water use on September 28 for the four counties and most of the rest of the northern part of the state.

According to former BOC Chairman Wendell Dawson, who says he obtained invoices from the Oconee County Utility Department, Oconee County even sold Walton County 11.3 million gallons of water for a 34-day billing period ending September 27, 2007. According to Dawson, Oconee County sold 87.1 million gallons of water to Walton County in the last six months, when the drought was firmly in place.

So why were Oconee and other officials so slow to take action as the drought progressed?

Selling water is how the counties get the money to build and operate reservoirs and water treatment plants.

For reasons that probably only The Oconee Enterprise editors understand, the paper has given former Oconee County Utility Department head Gary Dodd space for a column in the paper now that he is retired. In addition to using the column to attack critics of the department he headed until this summer, he also is using the column to brag about his accomplishments.

In his October 4, 2007, column, he bragged about the following: "(T)he Utility Department has operated in the black , without a price increase on consumption for the past 8 eights." Not coincidentally, Dodd was Utility Department director during those years.

It is difficult to balance the budget if people stop using water, either because of a ban on watering or because of an imposition of conservation pricing, which pushes down demand by charging a higher rate at higher levels of water consumption. Oconee County does not use conservation pricing.

The impact of the present ban on outdoor watering on water sales and on Oconee County’s ability to pay its expenses through water sales has not been a topic for open discussion just yet. Jackson County, even before the current ban, however, ran into problems making its payments on its indebtedness because of inadequate revenue, according to reporting in the Athens Banner-Herald late this summer.

Counties have few options to make up for lost sales. They can increase water rates, or they can shift the burden onto property owners through higher property taxes.

To pay off current indebtedness and then to finance construction of the Hard Labor Creek reservoir, Oconee County projects it will need for water sales to increase the 8% each year. That includes 2007. Given the current water ban, growth of any sort is unlikely in 2007.

Which helps to explain why the County was so slow in going to the total ban.

Anyone who might have doubted that the decision to move forward with the Hard Labor Creek reservoir was based on a desire to stimulate development only needed to attend the September 4 BOC Meeting.

Amrey Harden, president of Oconee State Bank, Chuck Williams, president of North Georgia Bank, and Charles Grimes, president of the Oconee County Chamber of Commerce, each took their turn to urge the Commissioners to go forward with the project to promote development.

The message likely was directed at Horton and Hale, who still voted against the project. They probably can expect some candidates who got the point to run against them in next Spring’s Republican primary.

The BOC makes lots of routine decision that also have impact on water sales. On August 7 the Board voted (with Horton and Luke in the minority) to approve a rezone request for a development including 196 houses on Old Barnett Shoals road in the far eastern part of the County.

Included was the agreement to extend a water line across the Oconee River to the development. The availability of water will open this area up for additional rezone requests.

The BOC, the current water ban shows, was offering to sell water it doesn’t always have.

The same can be said for efforts of Oconee and Clarke counties to lure a big manufacturer to the Orkin Tract on U.S. 78 and S.R. 316. Included in offers have been the agreement to provide both water and sewage services.

The Georgia legislature mandated the creation of a statewide Water Management Plan back in 2004.

The Georgia Water Coalition, an alliance of over 110 organizations committed to ensuring that water is managed fairly for all Georgians and protected for future generations, has been in existence since 2002.

The Coalition has asked the state to set safe levels of withdrawal from the state’s streams to guarantee their biological, chemical, and physical integrity. The goal is to leave the streams with the water necessary to keep the ecosystems functioning properly. The Coalition wants to require local governments to evaluate and implement conservation measures before increased water withdrawals are allowed.

In sum, the Coalition wants to focus on conservation and maintenance of stream flow, rather than simply allowing the government that gets the water into a reservoir first to have what it wants.

Friends of Barber Creek is part of the Georgia Water Coalition.

The meeting on Thursday, October 11, will give citizens a chance to learn about the state’s Water Management Plan and Coalition efforts to make sure that water conservation, rather than simply water consumption, are taken into consideration.

Governments that promote and finance their development through the sale of water aren’t very likely to make conservation a top priority, as the current response to the drought illustrates.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Written 9/18/2007

The Bonds of Hard Labor Creek

The Athens Banner-Herald reported today that a Newton County man has intervened in Walton Superior Court to block the sale of bonds to finance the proposed Hard Labor Creek Reservoir.

Walton and Oconee counties are partners in the $350 million project, with Oconee expected to pay more than $100 million.

The story doesn’t provide much background on Samuel M. Hay III, who filed the brief objecting to the validation of the bonds, or on the grounds for the request that the Court refuse to validate the bonds.

Hay, who has a Covington postal box, has a web site on which he is described as an independent researcher who has worked with environmental issues for more than 20 years. A story in the Banner-Herald in 2002, when Hay announced he was running for Governor as an independent, described him as a "journalist, newspaper officer and print company account manager."

According to the 2002 Banner-Herald story, Hay is not an attorney, though he has "entered into and argued" legal cases as a private citizen.

The Banner-Herald story today waited until the 10th paragraph of a 14-paragraph long story to explain the basis of Hay’s objection to the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir. The top of the story dealt with Walton County official responses to the legal action.

Some of the arguments Hay makes are ones that were voiced in Oconee County before the Board of Commissioners voted on September 4 to join with Walton County on the reservoir project. Others are new.

In his "Intervenor’s Brief," which Hay sent to me in response to my request, he claims that "Walton County has failed, by all standards of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division and appropriate Federal Law, to explore and prioritize more environmentally sound, less expensive and more productive alternative sources of water for the citizens."

"The debt service on this, the largest public works project ever undertaken in this County, will raise the cost of the project to in excess of $800 MILLION DOLLARS," Hay writes.

"Families farms, homes and a way of life will be needlessly destroyed forever having been inundated by the reservoir," according to the document.

Hay further contends:

"This reservoir will evaporate up to ten million gallons of water per day resulting in a valuable loss of downstream water supply to what may be the most valuable estuary in the entire Atlantic Ocean. This coastal region which reaches from the South Carolina state line to Jacksonville, Florida is being destroyed by the lack of planning and conservation of water resources within this area. Slowing of the flows in the waterways has destroyed valuable spawning grounds for marine life whose hatch are killed upon contact with the ever increasing salt content of the marshes due to reservoirs in this region causing severe chemical changes in the brackish water chemistry."

The filing also questions whether proper legal notice about the bond validation hearing was provided in Oconee County.

Finally, it questions whether permits will be granted for the pumping of water from the Apalachee River to the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir given previously issued licenses.

The Banner-Herald was following a story in The Walton Tribune published a on September 16. The Tribune story didn’t contain much information either.

Hay’s brief is on the web site, Oconee County Observations II.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Written 9/10/2007

What About Those Bids?

Oconee County has tossed out the three bids it received for the upgrade of the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant and will begin the process anew, according to Alan Theriault, administrative officer for the County.

Theriault sent me an e-mail message on September 7, three days after the Board of Commissioners (BOC) voted to upgrade the Rocky Branch plant, saying he plans "to meet with Utility Department personnel in the next several days to discuss particulars of moving forward and develop a rough time-line."

Theriault said he expected the initial step to be a "Request for Qualifications" advertisement "to identify design firms or teams that have specific experience with membrane filtration wastewater systems and that would be interested in this project."

The Utility Department had selected Jordan Jones & Goulding as its preferred bidder from among three firms that submitted bids for the project on July 31, 2007. JJ&G had proposed abandoning the membrane filtrate technology specified in the request for proposals in favor of a more traditional approach that produces lower quality water than membrane filtration.

The BOC brushed aside concerns of a full room of citizens when it voted unanimously to go forward with the Rocky Branch expansion.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Friends of Barber Creek, I had asked the BOC to guarantee that treated water from the plant will not be released into Barber Creek during floods, to agree to treat the water to the highest level the technology will allow, and to provide for independent monitoring of the plant.

At the September 4 meeting, BOC Chairman Melvin Davis said the concerns focused on operation of the plant and should be addressed at a later time.

Commissioners Margaret Hale, Chuck Horton and Jim Luke sent me e-mail messages after the meeting restating their willingness to discuss these requests. Commissioner Don Norris said not a word at the meeting and has not written me since.

At the meeting, I asked the Board to at least pass a resolution confirming its intent to respond to these concerns, but it refused.

Citizens who have depended on the media for an understanding of what is going on with the Rocky Branch upgrade are in a bind.

The Athens Banner-Herald has yet to write a word about the September 4 decision on Rocky Branch, though it did run a lengthy report about the BOC’s decision to join with Walton County on the Hard Labor Creek reservoir. That commitment is for an estimated $48 million. The Rocky Branch upgrade is expected to cost another $8-10 million.

The Oconee Enterprise had lengthy stories on both the reservoir and the Rocky Branch upgrade it its September 6 edition. The reporting was largely on target.

The Oconee Leader didn’t report on either vote in its September 6 edition, though it did put a story on its web site that day that provided a short but accurate account of the votes at the meeting.

Neither of these papers, however, reported on what happened to the three bids or what will happen next.

On July 31, the day the bids were opened, Utility Director Chris Thomas reported to the BOC that three bids had been received and indicated that he would be back in a week with a recommendation. The Utility Department leaders also said that the BOC should decide how to allocate the new sewage capacity between residential and commercial users.

On August 7, Thomas reported to the BOC that he was recommending JJ&G for the contract. Chairman Davis tried to get the Board to move on the recommendation, but it refused. Commissioner Hale said the Board had never voted to upgrade Rocky Branch. Commissioner Horton said he was opposed to JJ&G.

Utility Department head Thomas, however, is quoted in August 16 issue of The Oconee Enterprise as saying JJ&G was "still a viable option. The Board simply needs more information."
The agenda for the September 4 meeting gave no indication of what Chairman Davis would ask the Board to do. The action item was: "Consider upgrade of Land Application System." No sewage water presently leaves the Rocky Branch site; it is sprayed on hay fields on the property in what is termed a land application system.

When I posted my report (below) on 9/2/2007, pointing out that JJ&G had proposed eliminating the membrane system, was involved in the initial planning stages for the plant, and had been selected in part by members of a firm with which it has partnered in the past, I sent it to Commissioners Hale, Horton and Luke. I also sent it to the Banner-Herald and The Oconee Leader.

In accordance with an agreement I made with Chairman Davis on August 30, in exchange for being given access to the BOC chamber projection system and for being allowed to make a 12-minute presentation on behalf of the four Friends of Barber Creek Board members, I provided Davis with a copy of my comments on September 3.

In early afternoon on September 4, Davis e-mailed me at my office and asked me to call him. He then told me he saw no problems with our request that Rocky Branch meet a higher standard of discharge, since it already was doing that. He also said the County was committed to membrane filtration for the new plant.

He did not indicate that the bids would be tossed out, that the vote would be only whether to upgrade, or that no decision would be made about the three requests the Friends of Barber Creek leadership was making.

After I made our presentation at the meeting, however, Davis asked the BOC if it was ready to make a decision to move forward on Barber Creek.

Commissioner Hale asked Assistant Utility Director John Hatcher if the County was considering eliminating the membrane filtration system. Hatcher said the proposal was to use another technology to supplement the membrane system, but membranes would still be used.

The JJ&G bid recommended eliminating membranes entirely.

Hatcher also told Hale that the upgrade will include water storage facilities large enough to hold water for 28 days without discharging into Barber Creek. He said that would be enough for any flood period. He said the upgrade would cost between $8-10 million, though earlier estimates had been $6-8 million.

Commissioner Norris next made a motion to approve the upgrade. Commissioner Horton seconded. All four of the Commissioners voters to approve. The Chairman only votes in the case of a tie.

Before the vote, I tried to get Davis to let me speak again. He ignored me. After the vote, I continued to try. Commissioner Luke told Davis he wanted to let me come forward to speak again. Davis agreed.

I told the Board I thought we had "been outmaneuvered."

During the exchange, I reminded Davis that he earlier had rejected a request from the Friends of Barber Creek leadership to speak before the BOC on the grounds that he already knew what our concerns were. He said he had not rejected our request because he had allowed us to speak that night.

Davis sent me an e-mail on the morning of September 6, saying "You received the assurance from the Board that your requests would be reviewed and decisions will be made at the appropriate time when facility operational matters are considered. I view this as a positive result. I believe we all want a facility that is effective, efficient, economical, and environmentally friendly. When all is complete, I trust we will reach that goal."

I told Administrative Officer Theriault in e-mail messages on September 5 and 7 that I want to be informed about procedures to be followed in this second bidding process for the upgrade and that the Friends of Barber Creek leadership wants to review all the steps.

I also have told Chairman Davis and Commissioners Hale, Horton and Luke that we will not go away.

Monday, September 03, 2007

Written 9/3/2007

Why Not Give Us What We Want?

Friends of Barber Creek has consistently asked that Oconee County officials agree to three things should they decide to expand the Rocky Branch sewage plant and begin discharging treated wastewater into Barber Creek.

We’ve asked that the water not be released when the creek is flooding, that the water be treated to the highest level the technology will allow, and that the County provide for independent monitoring.

The County plans to include holding ponds in the upgrade. It has presented charts that show the new plant can exceed the proposed standards. And helping citizens monitor the plant’s operation would be inexpensive.

So why not simply agree to the requests?

E-mail correspondence between officials and Precision Planning Inc., the County's consultant, provide explanations.

Just after noon on December 12, the day of the hearing before the Georgia Environmental Protection Division on the County’s request for a permit to discharge 1.0 million gallons per day of treated wastewater into Barber Creek, Jimmy Parker of PPI sent an e-mail message to Alan Theriault, administrative officer of the County, Melvin Davis, chairman of the Board of Commissioners, Gary Dodd, Utility department director, and Christopher Thomas, assistant director of the Utility Department.

Parker also copied the message to Wayne Haynie of Jordan Jones & Goulding and Jim Sunta of PPI. The Utility Department is recommending that JJ&G get the bid to upgrade Rocky Branch.

The purpose of the message was to explain how the officials should address "the three issues presented in the attached flier," which was the petition we circulated asking the EPD to impose our three requests on the County.

Parker said that once Barber Creek floods, the additional water discharged from the plant would produce an increase in water that is "negligible." He said: "In fact, a fallen tree would have much more impact on stream hydraulics and flood levels than the proposed discharge."

So even if the impact is minimal, why not agree to hold the water?

In times of high rain, the County will have few customers for reuse water. The spray fields at the site also will be saturated. It is at these times when the County will most need to discharge into Barber Creek.

Those of us along the creek know that it has flooded often and badly in recent years. We also know that even another tree falling into it is a problem.

So how about the higher level of treatment?

"I feel the County is already going above and beyond, and the water that will be discharged will be cleaner than the water in the Creek," Parker writes. "The real answer to this question is that it would be cost prohibitive, and the net benefits of treating to higher standards do not justify the additional costs.

"I strongly recommend that the County hold their position as ‘meeting’ the requirements established by the State," Parker continued. "If we commit to exceed those requirements, the State may possibly reduce current effluent limits, which would result in additional costs for this and all future treatment expansions."

So it is a matter of money, and not yet being required to meet the higher standards.

Ironically, PPI and JJG prepared a slide presentation for the hearing that showed the Calls Creek sewage plant–the only other sewage plant operated by the County–easily exceeds the standards set by the state on at least two criteria. The Calls Creek plant uses the same technology proposed for Rocky Branch.

So what about independent monitoring?

"The EPD has the right to do this at any time," Parker writes, "but usually these activities are limited to compliance issues due to staffing shortages."

"In my opinion, Oconee County would not object to additional downstream sampling," Parker continued. "But this is an issue that must be addressed by the State, based on availability of resources."

In other words, if the state wants to do it, it is fine with Parker.

The Board of Directors of Friends of Barber Creek has asked that the County help citizens do this monitoring by creating a fund for that purpose and posting all records from operation of the plant on the County’s web site.

These are the issues that will be addressed at the BOC meeting tomorrow night (Sept. 4).

Though BOC Chairman Davis was involved in this correspondence with Parker and the other consultants, the four other members of the Commission are unlikely to even be aware of it.

The department heads work for Davis and report to him.

The four other commissioners, however, can tell Davis and the Utility Department how to operate the plant by agreeing to the three request we are making.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Written 9-2-2007

Baiting with Membranes

For three years, Oconee County officials have touted in public meetings the membrane filtration technology for its proposed expansion of the Rocky Branch sewage plant, saying the technology will allow the County to discharge "near drinking level" quality water into Barber Creek.

The County told the state Environmental Protection Division (EPD) when it applied for its permit to discharge into Barber Creek that it would use the membrane filtration technology in the plant.

When, on June 29 of this year, it issued a Request for Proposal for engineering design and support for construction of the upgrade, the County said the upgraded plant would use membrane filtration to treat the sewage water passing through it.

Prior to the July 26, 2007, deadline for submission of bids, however, County officials told bidders the County was interested in using less sophisticated technologies for Rocky Branch.

Jordan Jones & Goulding (JJ&G), the bidder that Utility Department Director Chris Thomas has recommended to the Board of Commissioners, has proposed two alternatives to membrane filtration.

Thomas has informed Board of Commissioners Chairman Melvin Davis he wants to explore the alternatives JJ&G proposed to membrane filtration for Rocky Branch.

Chairman Davis has put a decision on the upgrade of the Rocky Branch sewage plant on the agenda for the Sept. 4 meeting of the Board of Commissioners.

That Thomas would pick JJ&G from among the three bidders probably should not have been a surprise. JJ&G, with headquarters in Norcross but a branch office on South Milledge avenue in Athens, partnered with Precision Planning Inc. (PPI) of Lawrenceville in preparing the Design Development Report (DDR) the County submitted to the EPD with its application for its Rocky Branch discharge permit.

The report specified the membrane filtration technology to be used at Rocky Branch.

JJ&G also was in charge of construction of the existing Rocky Branch facility, which sprays treated sewage water onto hayfields on site and does not have a permit to discharge into any stream.

In addition, JJ&G competed with PPI over reservoir proposals for Oconee County, with PPI proposing the Walton County Hard Labor Creek project and JJ&G proposing a reservoir in Oconee County on Barnett Shoals road. PPI won, and the Board of Commissioners is expected to vote on Sept. 4 on a contract with Walton County for the Hard Labor Creek reservoir.

Thomas asked two people from PPI to evaluate the three bids submitted on July 26 and included their scores for the bids in reaching his decision to recommend JJ&G.

At the BOC meeting of July 31, 2007, when Thomas announced that three bids had been received, he said the bids would be rated by PPI, the County’s Public Works department, the Utility Department assistant director, and himself.

The evaluators rated the bids on five criteria, as specified in the Request for Proposal.

The raters could give up to 15 points for qualifications, experience and office location of the project manager, up to 15 points for experience of the bidder in design and construction of upgrades and expansions of sewage plants, up to 15 points for the experience of the bidder with membrane filtration systems, up to 15 points for the bidders understanding and approach to the project, and up to 40 points for the costs.

Thomas received ratings from Jimmy Parker and Jim Sunta of PPI, Dan Wilson, the assistant county engineer, and from John Hatcher, the assistant Utility Department director.

Keck & Wood Inc. of Duluth had the low bid of $643,000 but also the lowest average score from the five raters: 67.6. (Thomas reported the score of 63 in an e-mail message he sent to Chairman Davis on August 2, 2007.) Carter & Sloope bid $690,000 and received an average rating of 77.6. JJ&G, with its bid of $680,580, received a score of 92.6.

Low bidder Keck & Wood got the highest ratings on cost (average of 40 out of 40 points), but the lowest ratings on each of the other four criteria. JJ&G beat out all bidders on qualifications, experience and office location of the project manager, experience of the bidder in design and construction of upgrades and expansions of sewage plants, and for the experience of the bidder with membrane filtration systems. It essentially was tied with Carter & Sloope on understanding and approach to the project. (The scores can be viewed here.)

In his e-mail message to Davis on Aug. 2, Thomas said that, based on the scores, "the review team recommends the use of JJ&G for the design of the upgrade to the Rocky Branch WRF." (WRF stands for water reclamation facility and is an alternative name for sewage treatment plant.)

Thomas also wrote that "There are a number of alternate design approaches," and he had asked Wayne Haynie, senior vice president of JJ&G, "to include a pricing clarification based on some of the different approaches."

As I explained in my posting on Aug. 18, 2007, Davis tried to get the Commissioners to act on Thomas’ recommendation of JJ&G at the August 7 BOC meeting. The minutes say, "By consensus, no action was taken on this matter." I could not attend the meeting, and I don’t know if Thomas gave any hint then that JJ&G actually was proposing alternatives to the membrane filtration system.

Haynie from JJ&G and Van Kile, senior project manager, in their cover letter for their bid, said they were "delighted" to learn that Oconee County was willing to consider alternatives to membrane filtration for Rocky Branch. Haynie and Kile said they learned of this "flexibility in your thinking" at "the preproposal conference."

Haynie was one of 16 persons present at a "Pre-Submittal Conference" held on July 19, 2007, according to records given to me by the County. The official agenda for that meeting makes no reference to alternatives to membrane filtration.

The Request For Proposal, which specifies bid requirements, said: "Oconee County is committed to incorporating advanced technologies in its wastewater collection and treatment strategies and, therefore, has designated that the Rocky Branch WRF upgrade include membrane filters." (P. 7)

In the cover letter, Haynie wrote: "We know that you do not necessarily need a membrane plant to produce reuse water. Therefore, we are proposing a plant design that will provide you the following benefits:

"Lower energy consumption, allowing for lower annual operating costs.

"Easily expandable, because of common wall construction and site layout.

"Convertible to membranes in the future as discharge limits tighten."

According to the proposal, the membrane filtration system has three advantages over alternatives. It requires little space. It provides "an additional barrier to fecal coliform, cryptosporidium, and giardia, which results in more reliable disinfection." And it "will meet more stringent requirements without additional capital expense."

The EDP permit issued for Rocky Branch expires on March 29, 2012, and the County will have to seek reissuance of a permit for operation beyond that date. Standards could be changed.

JJ&G lists four disadvantages of the membrane technology: higher capital costs, higher energy costs, periodic membrane replacement, and the relative novelty of the technology.

It proposes as alternatives an "oxidation ditch process" and a "fill-and-decant activated sludge system." Both would require upgrading to meet more stringent effluent requirements, according to the proposal.

In the public presentations on the proposed Rocky Branch upgrade, County officials have praised the County’s only other sewage plant, which is on Calls Creek near Watkinsville. That plant used membrane filtration, and the County has held it up as a model. No problems with the plant have been mentioned publicly.

The JJ&G proposal, however, said that the County has experienced "unreliable water quality using membranes at Calls Creek." (P. 10)

JJ&G acknowledges that the Design Development Report (which it co-authored with PPI) has been reviewed and approved by EPD, but it said it is prepared to revise a DDR for submittal to EPD.

Keck & Wood, with two representatives at the Pre-Submittal Conference on July 19, did not include any alterative to membrane filtration it its bid.

Carter & Sloope also had one person at that meeting. The firm noted in its application that it understood that the Rocky Branch expansion was for a plant with a capacity of 1 million gallons per day (MGD) of capacity and that the proposal should allow for expansion to 2 MGD.

The Request for Proposal (RFP) asked bidders to prepare for expansion to 2 MGD. Carter & Sloope also note that it understood that the "ultimate build-out" of the plant could be 4 MGD, something the County has not openly acknowledged in the past.

Carter & Sloope submitted its bid based on "membrane technology as outlined in the RFP and DDR."

Carter & Sloope added: "It is our understanding that the County is having some concerns about the long-term O&M expenses of membrane treatment plants." It noted that it uses a disk filtration technology at the plant it designed for Barrow County, the only sewage plant currently discharging into Barber Creek.

Carter & Sloope cautions Oconee County, however, that while it would be willing to propose an alternative design to the County, the switch in technologies "may be a tough sell politically to the general public since Rocky Branch Water Reclamation Facility was predicated on membrane technology. Carter & Sloope attended all of the Oconee County public meetings and is aware of the public interest in this project."

The Carter & Sloope proposal contains another interesting observation:

"Sewer service is the catalyst to ignite the growth (in the County) and sustain it. While the economic impact may be positive, the impact on the natural resources of Oconee County and its infrastructure will be tremendous. To mitigate those impacts, adequate plans–a vision, if you will–must be put into place that will help Oconee County meet its current and future wastewater needs."

Oconee County has never adopted a wastewater master plan, though it hired a firm to do one for it. The first draft was produced in March of 2004. The second and final was produced in Feb. of 2005.

Both drafts recommended that the County begin shifting its waste treatment capacity from Calls Creek and Barber Creek to the Oconee River.

Care to know the name of the firm that produced that wastewater master plan?

Yes, it was JJ&G.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Written 8/18/2007

Guessing When BOC Will Act On Rocky Branch

It’s a guessing game as to whether the proposed expansion of Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant will be on the Board of Commissioners’ agenda on August 28.

Utility Department Director Chris Thomas is quoted in the August 16 issue of The Oconee Enterprise saying that the BOC will vote on that night on the issue.

BOC Chairman Melvin Davis, in an e-mail message sent to me this morning, said: “At this point in time I do not plan for this topic to be on the agenda for the 8 28 07 meeting.”

The County has not yet posted the draft agenda for the meeting.

Davis’ clearly would like to minimize citizen comment on the decision, and his record of providing details about what he plans to ask the Board to do on the issue isn’t very good.

On July 27, in response to a letter I sent him, Davis sent me an e-mail saying the “Utility Department will provide an update on this possible upgrade of the LAS site, to the Board of Commissioners at the Agenda setting meeting next Tuesday evening, the 31st of July.”

The draft of the Agenda for the Board of Commissioners posted before the August 7, however, indicated that the Board would "Consider approval of the LAS Design Proposal and Sewer Policy Clarification."

I objected in an e-mail I sent to Davis and the other Commissioners on August 5 on the grounds that citizens had not had a chance to review the bids, which had been opened only on July 31.

Davis wrote back the next day, saying:

“The item on the agenda for 8/7/07 does indicate action on the design for the facility. However, staff has indicated that with an RFP (Request for Proposals), negotiations may take place with the recommended vendor in order to clarify tasks, costs, etc. This will allow the Board of Commissioners and the public to have complete knowledge of the scope of the Proposal. At this point staff has not met with the vendor to qualify and clarify expectations. I expect staff to recommend to the BOC that negotiations take place and return to the BOC with specific tasks and costs associated with those tasks. In fact, this recommendation was made by staff to me and forwarded to the Board on 8/3/07.”

Despite this reassurance, Davis sought action on the recommendation by Thomas at the August 7 meeting that the County award a design contract for the plant expansion. The BOC, however, refused to take action.

The draft of the minutes for the meeting, posted on the County’s web site, explains the BOC inaction as follows:

“Utility Director Chris Thomas reported the Review Committee had completed its review of the three proposals for the Rocky Branch engineering upgrade and recommended the use of Jordan, Jones & Goulding (JJ&G) for the design of the upgrade to the Rocky Branch Water Reclamation Facility. By consensus, no action was taken on this matter.”

Charlie Baugh, who is active in Friends of Barber Creek and attended the August 7 meeting on the group’s behalf, put it this way:

“Thomas made the presentation and recommended JJ&G. The recommendation to the BOC was to allow the staff to negotiate the terms and work to be done and a final price for the design work.

“Davis called for motions, and there was a deafening silence. No one moved or said a word. Then Davis asked why there were no motions. (Commissioner Chuck) Horton said he would not vote for JJ&G to do anything. Then (Commissioner) Margaret (Hale) said she did not think it appropriate to continue until the Board had voted to do the expansion. (Commissioner Don) Norris was silent. Davis then said that since the Board was not ready he would defer the item to a later meeting. At that point (Commissioner Jim) Luke said he is for some level of expansion of the LAS site.”

Davis and his Utility Department have been pushing this project for two years, and Davis has tried to calm citizen concerns about it since they first arose in October of 2004. That was when some of us learned that the plant expansion would result in the discharge of treated sewage into Barber Creek.

It is at least possible Davis will try to get the BOC to take action again on August 28.

In rejecting a request by the Board of Directors of Friends of Barber Creek for a meeting with the BOC before any action is taken, Davis wrote on August 6 that the Board had already heard enough from citizens but “when a decision is made by the Board to upgrade the LAS site, a period of public comment will be allowed.”

Those of us who want to ask the BOC to protect the creek from flooding, treat the water to the highest standard the technology of the proposed plant will allow, and agree to independent monitoring of the plant will have to be prepared to make those requests in the “period of public comment” Chairman Davis says he will allow.

And it appears we’ll have to keep guessing when that will happen.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Written 8/15/2007

Chairman Davis Denies Request for BOC Meeting

Melvin Davis, chairman of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners, has rejected the request of Friends of Barber Creek that he schedule a public meeting so citizens can discuss the proposed expansion of the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant with the Board of Commissioners.

Davis wrote that the Board of Commissioners already has done enough to get input from the public and has addressed the concerns raised by the Friends of Barber Creek.

"I see no need to have an additional public meeting," Davis wrote in a letter dated August 6, 2007.

Davis said the Board of Commissioners has discussed the Rocky Branch facility at six meetings, two in 2004, two in 2005 and two in 2006, and held three public meetings on the proposed expansion.

One of those public meetings–in December of 2006–was actually a hearing citizens had requested with the state Environmental Protection Division (EPD), not the BOC.

The public notice telling citizens about the March 2006 hearing did not mention that plant expansion would result in discharge of treated sewage water into Barber Creek.

The BOC meetings dealt with permits and other preliminary actions. The BOC never has voted to expand the plant.

The County received a permit from the EPD in April of 2007 to begin discharging 1 million gallons per day (MGD) of treated sewage water from the Rocky Branch plant into Barber Creek when the plant is expanded.

The Board of Friends of Barber Creek wrote to Davis on July 17 requesting the opportunity to ask the members of the Board of Commissioners, should they decide to expand the Rocky Branch sewage plant, to:

1 Agree to hold discharge water from the Rocky Branch sewage plant in storage facilities when Barber Creek is flooding or threatening to flood, rather than discharge into the Creek;

2. Treat effluent from the Rocky Branch sewage plant to the highest level possible with the technology available and, at a minimum, to the level of treatment at the Hill Plant in Gwinnett County for water being discharged into Lake Lanier; and

3. Set up a system of independent monitoring of the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant, its effluent, and Barber Creek.

Davis said "It is my belief that the BOC has attempted to get significant public input into this process" and has "responded positively to the three (3) concerns outlined in your letter."

Davis said the County has agreed that the holding facilities on the plant site "will be used to store treated wastewater during times of flooding" and that this requirement "was approved by EPD."

In fact, the EPD permit, which the County received on April 2, 2007, makes no mention of holding facilities and places no restrictions on release of water into Barber Creek other than that the amount cannot exceed 1 MGD on a monthly average or 1.25 MGD on a weekly average.

Davis also contends in his letter that the new plant will use "the same standards as the Hill Plant in Gwinnett County."

In fact, the Gwinnett County facility is required to meet a higher standard than Rocky Branch for total suspended solids, ammonia, fecal coliform bacteria, total phosphorus and turbidity. For example, the Rocky Branch plant will be allowed to discharge water with a fecal coliform bacteria count of 23 per 100 milliliter, while the Gwinnett plant can discharge water with a fecal coliform bacteria count of only 2 per milliliter.

Davis said in his August 6 letter that the EPD "requires continuous monitoring" of the plant, but he does not state that this monitoring is done by the plant operators themselves.

Davis acknowledged that his decision to deny further public discussion could be overruled by a majority of the five-member Board of Commissioners.

Davis copied his response to the other members of the Board of Commissioners. None has written indicating disagreement with Davis’ decision not to hold a public meeting as requested by the Friends of Barber Creek.

The Rocky Branch sewage plant currently uses a Land Application System to treat sewage water, but that technique of spraying sewage water onto hayfields will be replaced by a plant with a membrane filtration system if Rocky Branch is expanded. At present, the County does not discharge treated sewage water into Barber Creek.

Davis’ response to the request for a public meeting on the Rocky Branch expansion contrasts strikingly with his response to the request from the Oconee County Chamber of Commerce earlier this year that the County consider approving beer and wine sales at restaurants.

Davis held lengthy public meetings on that issue in May and June, although, at this point, the BOC has not voted on the issue.

According to Davis’ letter, "when a decision is made by the Board to upgrade the LAS site, a period of public comment will be allowed."

The Board of Directors of Friends of Barber Creek had asked that Davis "schedule a public meeting at which those of us concerned about the health of Barber Creek are given a chance to discuss with the Board of Commissioners announced plans to expand the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant."

It seems it matters quite a lot which group makes the request for the courtesy of meeting with the BOC.

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Written 8/05/2007

County Asked to Take Another Step Toward Rocky Branch Upgrade

Chairman Melvin Davis has put on the agenda for late in the August 7 meeting of the Board of Commissioners an item that could have a big impact on Oconee County, and particularly on those who live along and care about Barber Creek.

The Board will be asked to "Consider approval of LAS Design Proposal and Sewer Policy Clarification."

This will come up after the Board considers eight rezones, including a controversial one on Old Barnett Shoals, and makes appointments to five County committees, including the Planning Commission.

This would seem to be an inappropriate time to decide on a project very conservatively estimated to cost $6 to $8 million and make decisions about how the sewage capacity gained from the proposed upgrade will be allocated between commercial and residential users.

Citizens will not get to see the bid until the meeting and will not know about the proposed sewage use policies until some proposal is announced at the meeting. It seems there will be little discussion of options.

I've written to Mr. Davis asking him to delay any decision on the important project. The text of my letter is below:


August 5, 2007

Dear Mr. Davis:

The draft of the Agenda for the Board of Commissioners meeting on Tuesday, August 7, indicates that, under Item 7, the Board will "Consider approval of the LAS Design Proposal and Sewer Policy Clarification."

I ask that the Board take no action at this time on these items.

At the July 31, 2007, meeting, Mr. Chris Thomas, assistant director of the Utility Department, indicated that he and his three designated reviewers would complete their evaluation of the three submitted bids for Engineering Design and Support for the Rocky Branch Water Reclamation Facility Upgrade only on August 2, and that he would not make his recommendation public until August 7.

As a result, citizens will not have had a chance to see the bids until the August 7 meeting. As is clear from the Request for Proposal itself and from the comments Mr. Gary Dodd, Utility Department director, at the July 31 meeting, the bid covers construction management and bidding, in addition to engineering design.

As a consequence, rather than merely making a decision on the bids, the Board is really being asked to make a decision on a project with an expected total cost of $6 to $8 million, according to the RFP.

In addition, the bid does not cover the full scope of work needed to upgrade Rocky Branch. As stated on page 7 of the RFP, it covers only work within "the treatment facility property boundary." The County must build a pump and pipe to get the treated water to Barber Creek, about a mile from the property, and the extensive water distribution network required to operationalize the "reuse" component of the plant.

As a result, the total cost for this project is going to be far in excess of $6 to $8 million.

In addition, on pages 1 and 6 of the RFP, bidders are advised that they should make provisions for an eventual upgrade of the Rocky Branch sewage plant to a 2 million gallons per day capacity, not the 1 MGD covered in the bid. So the decision actually has ramifications beyond the bid itself.

Mr. Dodd said at the July 31 meeting that he wanted to ask the Board to provide policy regarding the use of the new sewage capacity that the Rocky Branch plant will produce. He suggested an even split between commercial and residential use of the new plant’s capacity. During the discussion that followed, however, a number of options were discussed, including setting aside some of the new capacity for existing subdivisions now on septic systems.

In fact, in an e-mail message from Mr. Dodd to County Administrative Officer Mr. Alan Theriault on March 21, 2007, Mr. Dodd indicated that 391,340 gallons per day out of the existing 400,000 gpd of capacity at the existing Rocky Branch plant has "been sold (committed)," with a breakdown of 60% commercial and 40% residential. To get to a 50-50 split for the whole plant, as he suggests in the memo, more of the new capacity would have to be set aside for residential use. But Mr. Dodd also said in that e-mail that the BOC could decide "that they do not want any of the upgrade allotted for residential."

Citizens, who will learn first on August 7 what the Utility Department proposes, should have a chance to review these options and offer comment on them before the Board votes.

At the July 31 meeting, Mr. Dodd also raised the question as to how the Utility Department will set up its financing so that water customers in the County do not subsidize sewage customers, since there will be many more of the former than the latter. This, in addition, is an important issue for the Board to debate.

The list of questions in need of debate, however, is even longer. As you know, Mr. Thomas informed you in an e-mail message of April 2, 2007, that the county has a new wasteload allocation for the Calls Creek sewage treatment plant, "allowing us to expand to 1.5 MGD pending an antidegradation review." So the County could decide to expand Calls Creek rather than Rocky Branch.

In addition, the County received in June of 2006 a wasteload allocation to discharge up to 2 MGD of discharge water from the Rocky Branch plant into the Apalachee River. This option was never explored, but it would seem to be appropriate to discharge into the Apalachee if the County goes forward with the Hard Labor Creek reservoir plans. That reservoir, as you know, would draw water from the Apalachee downstream from the proposed discharge site, meaning that the County truly would be recycling the water it uses.

The fundamental problem is that the County has never debated and adopted a version of the February 2005 wastewater master plan produced for the County. That plan calls for the upgrade of the Rocky Branch plant only as a short-term solution to the need for additional sewage capacity in the County. The report recommends that the County move its sewage treatment facilities to the Oconee River, an option that still remains viable if the County were to work with Clarke County or seek a waste load allocation for alternate locations along the river.

I wrote to you on July 17 and informed you that the Board of Directors of the Friends of Barber Creek wishes to have an opportunity for citizens to voice their requests to the full Board of Commissioners regarding the upgrade of the Rocky Branch sewage plant. Specifically, we are asking that the Board of Commissioners:

1. Agree to hold discharge water from the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant in storage facilities when Barber Creek is flooding or threatening to flood, rather than discharge into the Creek;

2. Treat effluent from the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant to the highest level possible with the technology available and, at a minimum, to the level of treatment at the Hill Plant in Gwinnett County for water being discharged into Lake Lanier; and

3. Set up a system of independent monitoring of the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant, its effluent, and Barber Creek.

At this time, you have not responded to this request, other than acknowledge receipt of it via an e-mail message on July 27. If the Board of Commissioners approves one of the bids on August 7, it will mean that the County will have to go back to the bidder at a later time and ask for modifications to meet the first two requests above.

For all of these reasons, I ask that the Board of Commissioners take no action regarding the upgrade of the Rocky Branch LAS at the meeting on August 7.

I thank you for consideration of this request.

Sincerely,



Lee Becker, President
Friends of Barber Creek
1050 Scott Terrace
Athens, GA 30606 (Oconee County)
706 548 1525
lbbecker@mindspring.com

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Written 7/31/2007

Some Things Missing

The Request for Proposals for the $6 to $8 million expansion of the Rocky Branch sewage plant has one interesting and significant exclusion.

The RFP does not cover construction of the pipe and pump that will be needed to get the treated sewage water to Barber Creek or to the water distribution system required to carry the reuse-quality water to any customers the County may be able to line up for it.

The RFP stipulates that the project extends "only to the treatment facility property boundary." The RFP states that work beyond the 245-acre site off Rocky Branch road behind the new high school "will be addressed in a separate project."

The exclusion is interesting because the County originally planned to dump the water into an unnamed tributary at the edge of the County property, but the Georgia Environmental Protection Division has said it will not allow that, since the County sought and was granted permission to discharge into Barber Creek, not the unnamed tributary.

In addition, the County repeatedly has said discharge into Barber Creek will actually be less than the allowed 1.0 million gallons per day of treated sewage water because the County will sell the treated water to customers for irrigation. The County will have to build a separate distribution and metering system for the reuse water.

Chris Thomas, assistant director of the Oconee County Utility Department, told me in an e-mail message on September 6, 2006, that the Rocky Branch "discharge will be into the feeder creek," rather than Barber Creek itself. He copied his message to me to Utility Department head Gary Dodd. (Dodd will retire on August 6, and Thomas is set to replace him as director.)

At the December 12 hearing before the EPD, I argued that the draft permit was for the wrong stream, since it named Barber Creek and not the tributary.

The EPD in late March of 2007 informed me and others who questioned the County over its plans for the Rocky Branch plant that "The discharge is not to be occurring in the stream adjacent to the plant site, which is a tributary to Barber Creek."

On December 13–the day after the hearing--Curtis Boswell, from the Engineering & Technical Support Program at the EPD in Atlanta, sent an email message to Chris Thomas saying:

"We did a satellite view of the discharge location for the Rocky Branch facility. Looks like you guys are going to pipe approximately 1-mile to Barber Creek. I relayed this information to the Athens Banner this morning. Go ahead and submit the pump station and force main information with the plans and specifications for the wastewater facilities."

Gary Dodd e-mailed back to Boswell about an hour later, saying:

"This can gravity all the way and it is not a mile, what you sent ABH is ok with us, if they call we will tell them this is an option that we can use. Thanks for the heads up!!"

Boswell wrote back the following day (14th of December) saying:

"The application included a map showing a 1-mile radius essentially from the headworks. The proposed discharge location fell along the radius line. Am I missing something? This is the same location identified in the wasteload allocation. It did not look downhill all the way!"

The effort to convince the Athens Banner-Herald that the County had planned to pipe the water to Barber Creek all along was successful. The reporter never wrote about the issue and apparently did not know that the County was not even certain at that point whether it would have to pump the treated sewage to Barber Creek or whether it would flow by gravity.

One way or the other, the County has to get the water off the property. Unless it tries to use the unnamed tributary to do that, it will need to seek another bid for the pipe to Barber Creek as well as the distribution system for the reuse water.

That means the $6 to $8 million cost estimate is a low one.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Written 7/21/07

Letter Sent to Davis Requesting Barber Creek Meeting

The Board of Directors of Friends of Barber Creek has sent a letter to Melvin Davis, chairman of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners, requesting a public meeting to present three requests regarding the proposed expansion of Rocky Branch sewage treatment, which will discharge treated sewage water into Barber Creek.

Those requests are that the Board of Commissioners:

1 Agree to hold discharge water from the Rocky Branch sewage plant in storage facilities when Barber Creek is flooding or threatening to flood, rather than discharge into the Creek;

2. Treat effluent from the Rocky Branch sewage plant not to discharge quality but to the highest level possible with the technology available and, at a minimum, to the level of treatment at the Hill Plant in Gwinnett County for water being discharged into Lake Lanier; and

3. Set up a system of independent monitoring of the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant, its effluent, and Barber Creek.

Oconee County announced in a public notice in The Oconee Enterprise on July 12 that it has begun the bidding process for engineering support and design work for an expanded Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant. Proposals are due on July 31, and, according to Oconee County Clerk Gina Davis, the bids will be opened and the names of submitting firms will be read at 2 p.m. on July 31 in an open meeting in either the Grand Jury Room or Room 103 at the Courthouse.

I have requested that the County send me a copy of the materials provided to bidders. Ms. Davis has indicated that she is "working with Gary Dodd to get the materials" that I requested. Dodd is the Utility Department director.

Chairman Davis has indicted repeatedly since October of 2004, when the County began the permitting process to start discharging treated sewage water into Barber Creek, that no decision has been made to actually build the plant.

The County has never adopted a waste water master plan or indicated what plans it has for future expansion of the Rocky Branch plant or its second plant at Calls Creek, outside Watkinsville. The most recent draft master plan recommended that these two plants be phased out over time in favor of a plant on the Oconee River.

Here’s the full text of the letter I sent to Mr. Davis on behalf of the Friends of Barber Creek Board:

July 17, 2007

Mr. Melvin Davis, Chairman
Oconee County Board of Commissioners
Oconee County Courthouse
23 N. Main Street
Watkinsville, GA 30677

Dear Mr. Davis:

With this letter, I am formally requesting that you schedule a public meeting at which those of us concerned about the health of Barber Creek are given a chance to discuss with the Board of Commissioners announced plans to expand the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant and to begin discharging treated sewage water into Barber Creek.

I am making this request on behalf of the Board of Directors of Friends of Barber Creek, a citizen group created to preserve and enhance the attractiveness of Barber Creek and surrounding land in Oconee County and to protect and improve the ecological condition of the Creek.

The Board of Directors wishes to have the opportunity in a public meeting to ask the members of the Board of Commissioners, should they vote to expand the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant and begin discharging waste water into Barber Creek, that they also:

1 Agree to hold discharge water from the Rocky Branch sewage plant in storage facilities when Barber Creek is flooding or threatening to flood, rather than discharge into the Creek;

2. Treat effluent from the Rocky Branch sewage plant to the highest level possible with the technology available and, at a minimum, to the level of treatment at the Hill Plant in Gwinnett County for water being discharged into Lake Lanier; and

3. Set up a system of independent monitoring of the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant, its effluent, and Barber Creek.

I thank you in advance for your consideration of this request and look forward to hearing from you regarding the County’s plans for an open discussion of the proposed expansion of the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant.

Sincerely,



Lee B. Becker
President

cc: Post 1 Commissioner, Jim Luke
Post 2 Commissioner, Don Norris
Post 3 Commissioner, Margaret Hale
Post 4 Commissioner, Chuck Horton

Mailing Address for Friends of Barber Creek:

1050 Scott Terrace
Athens, GA 30606 (Oconee County)
Tel. 706 548-1525

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Written 6/21/2007

Giving Control over Oconee Taxes To Walton County

So many things are going on in the county at the moment that it is hard to keep track of them. Unfortunately, most of these need our attention.

A very big issue is the draft contract that the Walton County Board of Commissioners has approved and sent to Oconee County for approval. The contract–legally an intergovernmental agreement–defines how the two Counties will manage and finance the proposed reservoir on Hard Labor Creek, in Walton County.

Ownership is clear. Everything belongs to the Walton County Water and Sewage Authority, whose members are appointed by the Walton County Board of Commissioners.

The agreement calls for the creation of an Advisory Committee, made up of the Chairman of the Walton County Water and Sewage Authority, the General Manager of the Walton County Water and Sewage Authority, and the Chairman of the Walton County Board of Commissioners, which appoints the Walton County Water and Sewage Authority. Each could designate someone else to serve in his or her place.

Oconee County is to be represented by the Chairman of the Board of Commissioners and the Chairman of the Oconee County Utility Department, who is appointed by the Chairman of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners. Or these two individuals can designate someone to represent them.

The Advisory Committee will advise the Walton County Water and Sewage Authority. This, by and large, means the Walton County Water and Sewage Authority will be advising itself. Oconee County will have little say about how things operate.

The Walton County Water and Sewage Authority will bill Oconee County for 28.8% of all costs. Oconee County will be obligated to pay the bills for land acquisition and construction of the reservoir based on property taxes. The County can use revenue from the sale of water to pay the annual project costs.

Oconee County has used very extreme estimates of water needs and sales to justify joining Walton County on the Hard Labor Creek project. If the estimates are wrong, as they are likely to be, the annual bills are going to have to be paid by property taxes as well. To pay the bills, the County has to sell water, so it is going to be promoting development to pay for this reservoir.

The more water that comes in to the County, the more that has to be treated at the County’s sewage plants. This means the Rocky Branch sewage plant is going to be expanded, pumping even more sewage water into Barber Creek.

At this point, the most important thing is that this agreement be discussed in an open meeting at which citizens have an opportunity to ask questions and state opinions. Two Commissioners–Margaret Hale and Chuck Horton–voted against joining with Walton County for the reservoir. We need one more vote to make sure that Oconee County doesn’t enter into a contract with disastrous results.

Write to the Commissioners today. If you feel comfortable surrendering control over your taxes to Walton County, please say so. If you want an open discussion in which the Commissioners have to justify putting Walton County in charge of Oconee County tax revenue, please write and say that.

Here is the contact information:

Melvin Davis, (Chairman), mdavis@oconee.ga.us
Margaret Hale, margarethale@oconee.ga.us and marghale@aol.com
Chuck Horton, chorton@oconee.ga.us
Jim Luke, jluke@oconee.ga.us
Don Norris, dnorris@oconee.ga.us