The Brown Regional Sewer District board is seeking the county council’s approval to keep working on the Bean Blossom sewer project.
Last June, the council allocated $270,000 to the sewer board to do preliminary work related to the project, such as engineering, environmental reports, legal and financial work and soil studies. Those costs are expected to be paid back by a mix of grants and low-interest loans from the state and federal governments, which the board has not secured yet. The entire cost of bringing sewers to the Bean Blossom area is projected at about $7.3 million.
Because a new year has begun, the county council needs to reauthorize the board’s budget, the board was told last month.
The topic is not listed on the county council’s agenda for Thursday, Jan. 24, but sewer board members Clint Studabaker and Phil LeBlanc said they plan to be at that meeting.
In 2018, about $70,000 of the $270,000 was spent on the development of sewer plans and engineering studies. Studabaker told the county council in December that $200,636.77 remained to carry into 2019 — about 75 percent of the initial total.
At their Dec. 4 meeting, sewer board members discussed whether or not they would extend their project engineer’s memorandum of understanding — similar to a contract — and for how long. They voted 4-1 to keep Gary Ladd working until at least March 31.
He’s working on pieces they will need to submit their sewer project for state and federal funding consideration, which the board would like to do yet this year. To stay on track to get that application in, there are some tasks he needs to keep working on, he told the board.
Board President Judy Swift Powdrill was the lone vote against.
She said she’s personally in favor of having sewers and she believes they’re needed in Bean Blossom, but she wants to see the board put its work “on pause” until the need and want are proven.
“I felt and still feel like there are … various individuals who have come to be in the Bean Blossom area who want to remain anonymous and want the sewer system,” she said. “But what I have seen is anger, lots of hatefulness, toward the sewer board and people who are for it, are against it, that sort of thing.
“Again, I do feel that there is a need; however, I also feel that as a taxpayer and the person who went before the county council and made this presentation … I feel like that we need to put some of our future movement on pause. … I cannot see us continuing to spend money without absolute proof that there is this need and want.”
She specifically mentioned wanting to see the results of stream sampling that is planned for spring. The point of that testing is to determine the level of E.coli bacteria in public waters and whether or not it is coming from human or animal waste contamination. If it is from human waste, that could indicate a high level of failed septic systems in a particular area. A sewer system would replace individual backyard septic systems.
At the start of the sewer board’s next meeting on Dec. 11, it was announced that Swift Powdrill had resigned. Longtime board member Mike Leggins was elected to replace her as president.
Studabaker had lobbied for Ladd to keep working on the sewer project. Even if the plant ends up being built somewhere else than they’d planned, “those dollars spent are still being well spent,” he said about Ladd’s work. “… I feel like we can carry on through at least the first quarter (of the year) and evaluate what you’re talking about,” he had told Swift Powdrill at the Dec. 4 meeting.
“Well, I think we definitely need to evaluate where we’re going, and it depends upon, I think, the samples … and I just don’t feel that we should move on until we actually see that there is the need out there,” Swift Powdrill answered.
“I’m disappointed that the folks who want this don’t show up a lot to these meetings. I wish they would,” she added.
In addition to making plans for stream samples in the spring, the sewer board is working with the Brown County Health Department and the septic ordinance rewrite committee to comb through paper records of septic systems at the health department. That’s an effort to determine how many septic systems have been installed in Brown County, where they are, how old they are, and how well they might be functioning.
Studabaker reported on that data at the Dec. 17 county council meeting.
So far, the health department had researched 811 properties in the Bean Blossom watershed and found 631 properties with homes on them and 180 vacant parcels.
Of the 631 with homes, 361 (57 percent) had septic system records on file with the health department; 270 (43 percent) did not.
Seventy-six of those 361 records (21 percent) were classified as septic failures because they were not installed according to code, allowing wastewater to interact with groundwater, Studabaker said.
Of the 361 available septic records, 41 percent of systems are newer than 20 years old, 43 percent are 21 to 40 years old and 16 percent are older than 40 years. Age alone does not indicate that those systems work or don’t work, he noted; that’s just the data.
Swift Powdrill and Leggins both said they’d like to see a “boots on the ground” survey of septic systems in the Bean Blossom area to get proof of project need, but that would be up to the health department, health board or county health officer to order, they said, not the sewer board.
“If we come up with a very low number, it’s obvious this project isn’t really needed, but I really don’t think that’s going to be the case,” said Leggins, who owns properties in the Bean Blossom area and lived there for many years.
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Various boards have been working since the early 2000s to bring sewer service to Bean Blossom-area homes and businesses.
The current plan is to spend about $7.3 million on building a wastewater treatment plant in Bean Blossom, possibly along Gatesville Road, and running sewer lines to customers. It would be paid for by a mix of low-interest loans and grants.
The area the sewer board is looking at serving would include about 270 customers along State Road 135 North and its offshoots in the Bean Blossom area, the Bean Blossom Trailer Court, Old Settlers Road, Bittersweet Road, Little Fox Lake, Woodland Lake, Covered Bridge Road, and Freeman Ridge Road, as well as parts of State Road 45 and Gatesville Road.
The cost to sewer customers per month won’t be finalized until after the funding agencies respond, but the board is estimating monthly bills to be between $65 and $85.
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