News

Clear Creek sewer plant cost spikes by 60%

By Bill Moss, Published: June 3, 2024

The Henderson County Board commissioners will have to dig into reserves, scale back plans significantly or make other adjustments if they choose to greenlight the proposed Clear Creek sewer plant, the cost of which has spiked by 60 percent.

The projected cost of a new sewer plant fed by six miles of sewer line has climbed to $32 million, up $12 million from engineers' pronection in 2021. The county's consulting engineers, WGLA, $3.7 million worth of cost trims, but one of them, eliminating  sewer collection along U.S. 64, would also reduce the universe of ratrepayers. To fund the project the county received a state grant of $12.7million, appropriated $9.3 million in American Rescue Plan money and has $2 million in reserves left over from the construction Edneyville Elementary School, which the new plant would serve.

“The rate base assumes X number of customers are connected,” Commissioner Bill Lapsley said. If there are fewer customers, the only options to balance the books is to raise the rate or use general fund tax money to subsidize the cost, “and that is a no-go as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “The whole premise of my support is we’re able to do it with grant money, not with general taxpayers’ money, and using the city’s outside sewer rate we would be able to generate enough money to cover the cost.”

Commissioners are scheduled to hear the updated cost figures at their regular meeting tonight. The board needs to decide “by the end of July at the latest,” Lapsley said, because under the terms of the ARP grant, the project has to be under contract by Dec. 31.

“So why are we in a time crunch? Because the state took two years longer than they normally would to get us our permit,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, the state is the one that put us in this time crunch and part of the reason for the cost increase is the time delay.”

During the meeting Monday night, WGLA engineer Will Buie noted that an initial study of presented options ranging in cost from $2 million to $60 million. From those options, commissioners chose the option that would extend sewer lines from the WNC Justice Academy to the plant near Fruitland Road, also serving Blacksmith Run, Edneyville Elementary School and Camp Judea.

"A pretty ambitious project as you see here," Buie said. The permit "took much longer than we expected and that's behind us."

Lapsley again blamed state water quality regulators for the cost spike.

"An increase in a year, year and a half, from 22 to 32 million dollars, that's a significant increase, thank you very much state of North Carolina," he said. "It took them two years to issue a discharge permit for this project during that two years. That has caused this project to go up and this project is in jeopardy. Why? Because we only have $24 million in funds budgeted and we're faced with a project if we keep the same scope of $32 million."

"We're in a jam," he said. "It's going to be a tough decision what to do here. We still have to fix the Edneyville Elementary system."

Lapsley, a civil engineer, proposed an alternative that would reduce the scope of the sewer extension.

"By doing that we can serve Edneyville Elementary, serve Camp Judea, build a much smaller treatment plant so the cost of the project I think can get down closer to if not under the $12.7 million appropriation we have from Raleigh and keep sewer rates down," he said. "I think it's much more reasonable project and salvages the entire project. If we don't do that I'm afraid the entire project is in jeopardy."

THIS IS A DEVELOPING STORY. CHECK BACK UPDATES.