After a two-month delay due to the disruption in supplies because of Hurricane Harvey, construction crews are ready to start work on the upgrade to the sewer line from Epps Bridge Parkway to the Calls Creek wastewater treatment plant outside Watkinsville.
Piles of 12-inch pipe are stacked at locations on the route along Old Epps Bridge Road, the Oconee Connector and Daniells Bridge Road.
Oconee County commissioners are set to give final approval tomorrow (Tuesday) night to a $1.9 million contract to upgrade the sewer line running from Epps Bridge Parkway at McNutt Creek and down Daniells Bridge Road and Government Station Road.
The upgraded sewer line will allow the county to divert sewage now being pumped to the sewage treatment facility on Rocky Branch Road to the Calls Creek plant currently under expansion outside Watkinsville.
Oconee County Commissioners last (Tuesday) night voted to deny the appeal by Lovett-Keller Ventures LLC of a decision by Oconee County Utility Department Director Wayne Haynie to turn down a request by the developers for a transfer of sewer capacity for a subdivision in Bogart.
Stephen Lovett and Chad Keller of Gainesville and Oconee County had negotiated with REO Funding Solutions III LLC to purchase part of the sewage capacity held by Westland, a dormant 443-acre master plan development on the south side of U.S. 78 between Hog Mountain Road and the Apalachee River.
The owners of the long-dormant Westland and Parkside subdivisions have filed suit against Oconee County, seeking to block the decision by the Board of Commissioners to refund sewer capacity fees for the massive master plan developments.
In three separate lawsuits filed in Oconee County Superior Court, the owners contend, among other things, that the Board of Commissioners violated state zoning laws when it voted on Jan. 31 to refund sewer capacity fees paid by the developers of Westland and Parkside as well as by two other residential project developers.
Athens-Clarke County has excess capacity at its Middle Oconee Water Reclamation Facility, the sewer plant closest to Oconee County, an analysis of the Discharge Monitoring Reports for the plant since January of this year shows.
Athens-Clarke County also has a gravity feed sewer line running along its side of McNutt Creek, paralleling the sewer line that Oconee County is building from Bogart to Epps Bridge Parkway on its side of the stream.
Oconee County Board of Commissioners Chairman Melvin Davis and county Administrative Officer Jeff Benko met with their counterparts in Athens-Clarke County in late June to discuss possible collaboration in wastewater treatment.
Benko described the session as “a short meeting with no meaningful results.”
Oconee County citizens will witness a change of culture in county government after Jan.1, said John Daniell, who will take over as chairman of the Board of Commissioners on that date.
The work of the government and the Commission will be “responsive to citizens...efficient in our operations, and...bring everybody in and talk about our goals and where we want to go as a community,” Daniell said.
Expansion of the Calls Creek wastewater treatment plant to 1.5 million gallons per day from its current .667 million gallons per day of capacity should serve county needs until 2025, according to forecasts the county provided to the state Environmental Protection Division on Monday.
Expansion of the Calls Creek Plant to 3 million gallons per day would allow the county to meet needs through 2035, the county said.
Oconee County on Tuesday announced a major sewer spill into Barber Creek at Malcolm Bridge Road as a result of a break in a forced main leading to the county’s Land Application Site on Rocky Branch Road.
The actual break in the sewer line occurred sometime before noon on Monday, according to an email message Oconee County Utility department Director Wayne Haynie sent Tuesday afternoon.
Oconee County is still waiting on a report from the firm it hired to do survey work for the route of the proposed sewer line down Calls Creek, county Utility Department Director Wayne Haynie said today.
Haynie told Jim McGarvey from Friends of Calls Creek that no additional information on the route of the proposed sewer line likely will be available before the meeting the group has called for 7 p.m. on Thursday at the Library in Watkinsville.
Oconee County water and sewer customers likely will get a reprieve, at least temporarily, from the annual water and sewer rate increases of recent years.
Oconee County Utility Department Director Wayne Haynie told the Board of Commissioners at a budget hearing last week that he is not asking for a rate increase as part of his budget request.
Oconee County Utility Department Director Wayne Haynie has said in recent meetings that the proposed sewer line down Calls Creek is not a new idea, and he is right.
The county has had that sewer line in its long-range plans since at least 2005.
More than 70 people turned out last night to hear Oconee County Utility Department Director Wayne Haynie explain his plans to run a sewer line down Calls Creek, and all of those who spoke up told Haynie in no uncertain terms that they didn’t like the idea.
The meeting, called by a newly created group called Friends of Calls Creek, ran for about two hours and included a description by engineer Jimmy Parker of what easements for and construction of the pipeline would mean for residents along the creek.
Oconee County commissioners voted In May of 2014 to move $2 million out of the water and sewer account in the 2009 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax at a time when the county’s Utility Department desperately needed money for maintenance and expansion of its two wastewater treatment facilities.
The commissioners took the action after deciding the Utility Department could delay spending its SPLOST funds and that the county instead could transfer the water and sewer money to pay off the debt on the Jail/Emergency Operations Center/E911 Facilities and Tower.
The Oconee County Board of Commissioners tomorrow night will consider a request from its Utility Department director to increases by 28 percent the allocated capacity in the county’s sewer system for residential use.
Utility Department Director Wayne Haynie is asking the Board to set aside a policy it adopted on Dec. 2, 2008, but never actually implemented that said “that any additional capacity realized be restricted to commercial usage.”
At the Oconee County Board of Commissioners work session on Jan. 14, county Utility Department Director Wayne Haynie said he was prepared to move forward with purchase of a refurbished sewerage treatment plant to expand the treatment capacity of the existing Calls Creek facility to 1 million gallons per day.
Last night at the Board of Commissioners meeting, Haynie changed course and proposed that the county break its contract to purchase the used plant and instead build a new facility on the Calls Creek property.
Oconee County Utility Department Director Wayne Haynie will ask the Board of Commissioners tomorrow night to change the county’s allocation of sewer capacity so that 40 percent is allocated to residential use.
The proposal represents a change in policy put into place by the Commission in 2008 but never actually implemented.
Wayne Haynie, director of the Oconee County Utility Department, told the 25 people who turned out on Thursday night at the Oconee County Library to discuss water quality in county streams that he wants to partner with them.
It was the first time a county official has met with the public to discuss sewer issues since serious problems with the county’s sewerage treatment plants were revealed in late May, and Haynie used the opportunity to present the image of a Utility Department that is responding to those problems.
Even though the Oconee County Calls Creek wastewater plant stopped producing solids at least a year ago, the county continued to pay a company for hauling those solids to a landfill through at least the end of April of this year, according to financial records of the county’s Utility Department.
Solids, also referred to as sludge, are removed from the raw sewage in a wastewater plant as part of the treatment process and then disposed of, generally at a landfill.
Oconee County Administrative Officer Jeff Benko raised concerns about the build up of solids at the county’s Calls Creek wastewater treatment plant at least five days before problems at the plant were exposed by a citizen and nearly four weeks before consultant Bob Sheldon said solids at the plant had reached a critical stage.
Utility Department Director Chris Thomas reassured Benko that “I think everything is ok as far as sludge goes” at the plant.
