City leaders for Fort Oglethorpe and Ringgold made pitches Monday night for the importance of upgrading their sewer systems.
Fort Oglethorpe City Manager Jennifer Payne-Simpkins said priorities for the next sales tax cycle are expanding lines and upgrading the current system to prevent leaks, especially with more pressure from the city of Chattanooga. In 2012, amid complaints of tons of sewage overflows at the Moccasin Bend Wastewater Treatment plant, Chattanooga officials signed a consent degree with the Environmental Protection Agency, promising to upgrade its sewer system with about $250 million worth of improvements.
The results of that agreement have rippled down to North Georgia cities that transfer water to Moccasin Bend. Case in point: Fort Oglethorpe.
The city's former agreement with Chattanooga ended in May. Now, the city faces an order to flow less water up to Moccasin Bend: It can't send more than 186,000 gallons per hour.
In 11 of the past 12 months, Payne-Simpkins said, the city has averaged water flows in excess of that rate. In the future, when the city flows more water than that, Chattanooga will tack on a 15 percent surcharge to the water bill. In a typical month, Fort Oglethorpe's water bill is $80,000 - meaning the penalty would cost about $12,000 each time.
The money would roll down to residents' wallets.
"To fix this flow rate," Payne-Simpkins said, "solutions are expensive."
Right now, city workers are inspecting their current sewer lines, seeing where any cracks have allowed water from the ground to seep in. Payne-Simpkins said they also want to replace some PVC water mains with iron pipes.
In addition, the city is already working on expanding its sewer lines. Crews have run down Scruggs Road and are currently adding lines on Highway 41. Payne-Simpkins said the city council hopes to add another $1.2 million worth of lines if voters pass the next round of sales tax revenues in 2019.
"We may want to look at constructing a storage facility for sewage," she added. "That would allow us to control the rate at which it's flowed into Chattanooga's system."
City officials from Ringgold and Fort Oglethorpe, as well as elected leaders from Catoosa County, met at the Colonnade on Monday night as an opportunity to express areas where all three governments could work together. County Chair Steve Henry organized the meeting as a first-step effort to improvement relations between the three municipalities.
Like Payne-Simpkins, Ringgold City Manager Dan Wright used the meeting as an opportunity to discuss sales tax revenue - and why voters should approve the 1 percent hike at local shops. And like his counterpart in Fort Oglethorpe, Wright said a big priority is the upgrade of sewer lines, what with the added pressure coming from Chattanooga.
Ringgold city officials have a little more room to breathe than those of Fort Oglethorpe; the city's agreement with Chattanooga has not run up yet, unlike Fort Oglethorpe's.
Still, Wright said the city must upgrade. In a presentation, he pitched adding sewer lines in the areas of Little Chickamauga Creek, Scenic Hills, Edgemon Highlands, Fox Den, Battlefield Parkway Estates and from Peavine Basin to Heritage High School and Heritage Middle School.
In total, according to the presentation Wright gave, the projects would cost about $12 million. In addition to the new lines, he said, the city has to clamp down, fix any cracks in its own system.
"It's not anything warm and fuzzy to talk about," Wright said. "But I'm going to tell you: it could cripple a system."
Contact Staff Writer Tyler Jett at 423-757-6476 or tjett@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.