The Brown County Council will vote on giving the Brown County Regional Sewer Board $270,000 to help get a grant to bring sewer to Bean Blossom.
Last week, the council unanimously approved the additional appropriation advertisement from the county’s rainy day fund.
“We need the funds to go ahead and pay our engineer and rate consultant and attorney — everything we need to do to get the project moving forward,” sewer board member Mike Leggins said.
Building a sewer plant in Bean Blossom is Plan A, board member Phil LeBlanc said.
Plan B would be take the wastewater flow from Bean Blossom into Nashville, using space in the town’s current plant. A tentative agreement has been made with the town about that backup plan, LeBlanc said.
Leggins said that the Indiana Department of Environmental Management does not want to see individualized treatment plants “dotted all over the county,” so the board is presenting Bean Blossom’s plant as a regional plant on the IDEM application.
Council President Keith Baker said recent issues over territoriality may have caused some concerns about the project.
“I think your meeting today, it was a big step for me … in showing us that both Nashville and Brown County are now willing to work together. I don’t want to see any economic development stymied,” he said.
One of the issues about territory related to the Maple Leaf Performing Arts Center, and the regional sewer board not wanting to give up potential sewer customers.
The 2,000-seat, government-owned music venue will be built on Snyder Farm land behind Brown County Health & Living Community. It lies outside the town’s sewer service boundary, in regional sewer district territory.
The morning of the council meeting, LeBlanc, Leggins and Baker met with Town Manager Scott Rudd, Town Attorney James T. Roberts and town council members Jane Gore and David Rudd to discuss sewer service boundaries.
LeBlanc said that evening that the regional sewer board had established a tentative buffer zone around the town of Nashville. That will allow homes or businesses close to town to hook onto the town’s sewer instead of to the regional sewer system when it is constructed. The board hadn’t yet taken a vote, though.
“If there’s an economic development project that’s close to town limits, but may be out a little bit from that, I don’t want anybody bucking up and saying, ‘Well, no. That’s ours, not yours. Pay us big time or we can’t build that,'” Baker said.
“We should all be focused on infrastructure and economic development to move our county forward and bring people here, pay good salaries and do what we need to be doing.”
Leggins said that is the current stance of the regional sewer board.
“We don’t want to halt any current or future economic development,” he said.
“We’re happy with that,” LeBlanc said of the buffer zones.
Leggins said the regional sewer board wants to see everyone served “in the best way.”
“We feel that the existing plants ought to serve what makes sense for them to serve, economically,” he said.
Plans for money
Building a sewer plant and system in Bean Blossom is estimated to cost $7,355,445 and serve 275 customers in the Bean Blossom, Woodland Lake, Little Fox Lake and Freeman Ridge areas.
Regional sewer board President Judy Swift Powdrill said at the April 16 council meeting that the county could be refunded the $270,000 if the sewer board receives a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development program. Money for the sewer project also may be available through the State Revolving Loan Fund.
But first, IDEM has to approve a sewer plant site in Bean Blossom.
Baker asked if the regional sewer board had plans for how it will spend the $270,000.
Council Vice President Dave Critser said once the money is turned over to that board, they can do what they want with it, “unless you’re wanting to dictate everything. I don’t think we should dictate. The whole idea of (the) Brown County sewer board, Nashville, Helmsburg and Gnaw Bone (sewer boards) is to get people sewer who need it,” he said. “That’s the objective. As long as we all stay on that objective, let’s not worry about whose territory.”
Resident Tim Clark said he had concerns about the county not getting the $270,000 back. If the regional sewer board doesn’t get grant and loan money for this project from the USDA and SRF, that is a risk.
Clark also asked for a detailed budget and timeline. “This (Bean Blossom sewer) project has reportedly been going on for 14, 16 years. We put a lot of money into engineering studies into this over time. I’d like to understand, is there a detailed plan on how that money is being spent so we can ensure success?” he asked.
A budget handed out at the April sewer board and redevelopment commission meetings shows the $270,000 going toward engineering work, environmental reports, legal and financial work, soil studies and administrative costs. Baker said he would get Clark a copy.
County council member John Price asked when the board expected a turnaround on the IDEM plant decision and if it would be better to hold off on awarding money until then.
Leggins said their application is going in the first round of grants for 2019.
“We’ve already spent money,” LeBlanc said. “The engineer is working on the preliminary engineering report (for the Bean Blossom plant). He’s working on his own money.”
Before further work can be done, those people need to be paid, he said.
Based on past communication with the funding agencies, the regional board believes it might be able to get a better grant deal if it partners with another entity, such as the town of Nashville, to treat wastewater in a regional way. So even though the estimates for pumping wastewater to Nashville came back higher than building a new plant in Bean Blossom, if the board has to send its wastewater to Nashville instead, it may still work out OK, Leggins said. Regardless, the board believes that it has the “regional” aspect of its wastewater plan covered.
“If we’re deeming this a regional plant, that fits the same terms as going to Nashville. If our plant is a regional plant … if for some reason Helmsburg’s goes down, we’re designing this plant so they can come to us,” Leggins said.
Council member Darren Byrd said he was concerned about centralizing all of the county’s sewer services in Nashville. “(If) something happens, a catastrophe of some kind, our entire sewer for the county is down,” he said.
Leggins said that’s one reason he thinks that the Bean Blossom needs to cover the northern part of the county. “Helmsburg needs to cover the west. Gnaw Bone can cover the east. I believe there needs to be another plant in the south, the Belmont area, which can get that area of town as well. We have to convince IDEM of that,” he said.
“We have to go to bat for our own plant, but it’s out of our hands, basically. We can put together the best plan we can possibly come up with, but we have to sell them on that plan.”
Do we need this?
Resident Sherrie Mitchell asked the council if a survey or questionnaire had been sent to the people who would hook up to the Bean Blossom sewer.
“I think it would be prudent to ask the 275 people that you are about to impose a bill upon if they want this. I think it’s fair,” she said.
Leggins said the average home in Brown County was built in the 1950s, and septic systems are not designed to last forever. “So, the age of existing septic system is 50-plus years old,” he said.
He said he knew of “very few” new septics having been put in recently.
Leggins said by the time the Orchard Hill neighborhood hooked up to the town sewer, more than 70 percent of the septic systems in that area had failed. “What makes you think Bean Blossom isn’t going to have the same result?” he said.
Bean Blossom resident Ron Lawson said the Bill Monroe Music Park is facing pressure from IDEM because of septic issues there. He asked if it would be possible to give the music park a grace period and not make it immediately hook onto the new sewer system if the new owners spend money to put a new septic system in now.
“They have a plan in place and it’s a six-month plan, eight-month plan, not a four- or five-year plan. I am hoping there is going to be some forgiveness here, to where if they spend $300,000 to fix what we can’t … that they are going to allow them a grace period before they have to tack onto this (sewer),” he said.
The trailer park in Bean Blossom also has “critical” septic system issues, Baker said. “I’m not willing to put 50 or 60 residents on the street if that system fails. We have tried to get another plan in place for that. Those are all questions I am asking right now, too,” he said.
Lawson said he hoped that whatever the county decides to do, they allow the trailer park and music park to do what they need to in order to remain in business.
Leggins said engineers have stated that, worst-case scenario, it would take three years to get sewer up and running in Bean Blossom.
“Everybody will be hooked on,” he said.
Jim Kemp, president of the Brown County Redevelopment Commission, said it’s important for the county to figure out a way to attract and keep people here, and to do that, the county needs more places for people to live — affordable ones.
Since a lot of land is owned by the state and federal government, Kemp said the county should look at forming clusters of houses. “The days of Jim Bob coming out here and buying 16 acres and putting that one home on 16 acres, I don’t think we can afford to do that anymore as a county,” he said.
Kemp has been working with Helmsburg to establish a community development corporation and an economic development area. He found about 450 acres of privately-owned land in that area that could one day be developed — but first, sewer service is needed.
Kemp said he supports a sewer plant being built in Bean Blossom so that it could help the Helmsburg area if Helmsburg’s plant needed to be replaced or service expanded.
Development talk aside, Leggins said that installing sewer in the northern part of the county also is needed to sustain life as residents know it.
“If we don’t make this happen, if Bill Monroe goes away, if Brownie’s (restaurant) goes away, if the trailer park goes away, Helmsburg goes away, what do we have left? That’s the real issue,” he said.
This story has been corrected to reflect that the Brown County Council voted to advertise the additional appropriation and not to give the Brown County Regional Sewer the money requested. The additional appropriation will be voted on at the next council meeting in June.
