Columbia County is preparing for a new sewer line that will run from Harlem to Grovetown.
The county took over the Harlem water and sewer system on July 1, 2021, which according to Stacey Gordon, water utility services director, was an “old, antiquated plant that is in dire need of upgrades.” Because of its age, there are times when the plant is having to handle more flow than it’s designed to handle. So, the county has started looking at solutions to solve the problem.
“We looked at several things, the plant, if we were to upgrade the plant, the largest the regulatory agencies would allow us to upgrade it to is 750,000 gallons,” Gordon said. “Based on our growth plan for the county in probably 10 years we would exceed the capacity of the plant and then have to upgrade it again. But because it is near the top of the headwaters of the river you can’t discharge but so much from a treatment plant in there. The regulatory agencies like you to have a larger body of water when you’re discharging into streams and creeks because we have to treat them down to certain levels.”
If the plant exceed capacity within 10 years like expected, Gordon said the county would then have to run a sewer line anyway, so they are going ahead and doing it now.
The sewer line will be six miles and will be a gravity flow that will start in Harlem, follow Euchee Creek and tie into an existing sewer line that will then flow into the Little River Plant, which has enough excess capacity.
“This will allow us to close down an antiquated plant and we can, we have space, we can use our operator somewhere else that we need them,” Gordon said. “But that’s really the purpose for the sewer line, just to serve Harlem. Plus, from a financial standpoint also by doing this we can get three times the capacity in our sewer line to route to our other plant, our much larger plant, than we would be ever to expand the Harlem to for roughly the same cost.”
The cost for this projected is estimated to be around $15 million, is expected to begin early next year and take approximately 18 months to complete, Gordon said.
The project is estimated to cost around $15 million and will take approximately 18 months to complete.
“We still have to get approval from all the homeowners, so we’ll be going out and contacting each one of them and talking with them and coming to an agreement with them on where to route the sewer through their property,” Gordon said. “It’s going to be quite a bit of work and easements.”
At the end of April a meeting was held with property owners who will have the line running through their property. Gordon said there was a good turnout and property owners were able to talk with the county and express their concerns, which could possibly be addressed in their designs.
“We had a few people in the meeting that were, it’s a rural area and they were concerned about the sewer line going through their area,” Gordon said. “But I really think it cleans up the stream, it’s a good environmental piece for Harlem and it also helps the growth that is happening in Harlem. They really don’t have a lot of room to expand that plant there and it really will help the citizens of Harlem because we’re taking over and as we take over, we’re slowly trying to improve the water and sewer system and I think we show it by spending quite a bit of money in Harlem to improve their sewer system.”
As for the future of the Harlem plant, Gordon said there are no plans set in stone, but it could be used as a staging area for the workers in Harlem.
