The head of the Walker County (Ga.) Water & Sewage Authority is out.
The authority's board voted 4-0 to fire General Manager David Ashburn during a special called meeting Thursday night. Ashburn was a long-standing county employee who wore many hats, including as an interim sheriff in the mid-1990s. However, he fell out of favor when Commissioner Bebe Heiskell lost her re-election bid to Shannon Whitfield in November.
Ashburn said he did not want to discuss the details of the firing with the Times Free Press on Friday.
"I take full responsibility as a manager and am moving on," he said.
Brandon Whitley, manager of the Walker County Wastewater Treatment Plant, will be the authority's interim general manager. Meanwhile, the board will decide on a list of qualifications for Ashburn's full-time replacement and advertise the job opening on the authority's website.
Whitfield, who serves as chairman of the authority's board, said Ashburn needed to leave because he was part of a previous administration that mismanaged the water system. He said the authority is on pace to lose $1.3 million this year, though Ashburn said the figure is closer to $800,000.
Outdated sewer lines are a particular problem. The county sells 12 million gallons of fresh water a month, but about 100 million extra gallons of stormwater infiltrated the system in April. Whitfield said Ashburn was the authority's general manager for 12 years and, at times, was also a voting member of the board.
The commissioner said Ashburn and other former board members should have fixed this problem sooner.
"David has been giving us excuses for six months," Whitfield said. "The board had lost confidence in his ability to manage and move the company forward. These issues were not addressed on his watch as a board member and/or as a general manager. The new board has to deal with the past neglect."
In March, the board voted to increase water and sewerage fees by about 15 percent to replace the system's 2-inch galvanized pipes with 6-inch, high-pressure poly-plastic pipes. These are supposed to stop excess water from seeping into the system, saving the authority money in the long run.
The water infiltration problem is particularly pressing because the city of Chattanooga, which owns the treatment plant, has cracked down on stormwater that has infiltrated water lines throughout the region, adding charges to municipalities with sewer flows three times higher than normal.
This is part of a 2012 settlement the city reached with the Environmental Protection Agency after it sued the city for dumping more than 354 million gallons of raw sewage into the Tennessee River over about seven years.
The consent order called for the city to fix leaks in hundreds of miles of sewer lines and stop overflows at the Moccasin Bend Wastewater Treatment Plant. The cost of the whole project, which is ongoing, is $250 million.
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at 423-757-6476 or tjett@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.