News

County eyes options after Edneyville sewer cost spikes by 60%

Graphic shows the cost increase of the Edneyville sewer system since 2021. [WGLA/HENDERSON COUNTY ENGINEERING]

By Bill Moss, Published: June 4, 2024

The Henderson County Board of Commissioners got the bad news Monday that the cost of the Edneyville sewer project has spiked by 60 percent, leaving a $6 million shortfall to bridge by spending more or doing less.

After a lengthy discussion during their regular meeting, the elected leaders appeared to be tacking toward a scaled back plan that would salvage the project and still serve the most crucial customers.

The projected cost of the proposed wastewater treatment plant on Clear Creek fed by six miles of sewer line has climbed to $32 million, up $12 million from engineers’ projection in 2021, WGLA Engineering, the consulting firm for the project, said in a new report.

“An increase in a year, year and a half, from 22 to 32 million dollars, that’s a significant increase,” Commissioner Bill Lapsley said Monday night. “‘Thank you very much state of North Carolina’ — took them two years to issue a discharge permit for this project. During that two years, ‘thank you very much, nationwide inflation,’ has caused this project to go up. So now this board is faced with a serious decision. 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 at a cost of $32 million.”

WGLA’s principal engineer, Will Buie, noted that an initial study 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, Camp Judea and U.S. 64. The county received a permit from the state Department of Environmental Quality in May after the regulators demanded that it commit to cleaner discharge into Clear Creek, which is already rated “impaired.” The change added around $750,000 to the cost of the treatment plant.

The permit approval “was a long time coming,” Buie said. “It took much longer than we expected but we have that in hand. That’s behind us.”

Lapsley proposes plan to salvage the project

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

“My sense is that we can do this project, serve Edneyville School, serve Camp Judea” and downsize the treatment plant. The substantial cuts on the capital expense end would enable the county to “keep the sewer rates down to where we originally intended them to be,” he added. “I think it’s a much more feasible project that can solve the original problem that we were trying to solve and salvage the project. If we don’t do that I’m afraid the entire project is in jeopardy.”

The consulting engineers identified $3.7 million worth of cost trims, but one of them, eliminating sewer collection along U.S. 64, would also reduce the universe of ratepayers. To fund the project the county received a state grant of $12.7 million, appropriated $9.3 million in American Rescue Plan money and banked $2 million in reserves left over from the construction of Edneyville Elementary School, which the new sewer lines would serve.

“The rate base assumes X number of customers are connected,” Lapsley said in an interview earlier Monday. If there are fewer customers, the only options to balance the books would be 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 pitch borrowing, phased expansion

Commissioners David Hill, Daniel Andreotta and Rebecca McCall all said they’d like to see the project serve U.S. 64 between the Justice Academy and the plant. Hill asked staff to look at the possibility of borrowing $6 million to bridge the gap, if revenue from ratepayers could cover the debt service. Andreotta asked whether the system could be expanded in the future.

“If you elected to build a smaller treatment plant, you still have the discharge permit of 200,000 gallons a day so you could expand the plant in the future,” Buie said. “You could certainly add more lines in the future. A way to phase this may be something that we can look at.”

McCall, the board chair, said serving businesses along U.S. 64 had been a primary reason for the Edneyville project from the start.

“So here’s my challenge,” she told Buie. “Provide as much service as we can along 64 because that’s where the businesses are. Aside from Edneyville Elementary, it was the businesses on 64 that really pushed this project as well as the Justice Academy, because we know that system is going to fail, and eventually Camp Judea is going to fail.”

She closed by urging the engineers to “keep 64 alive, whatever we have to do, for $24 million. Here’s your budget, make it happen.”

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.”

-30-