Hamilton County WWTA spends federal dollars mayor attempted to pull for other projects

Staff Photo / A sign indicates work being done along the 7600 block of Snow Hill Road in 2018 in Ooltewah.
Staff Photo / A sign indicates work being done along the 7600 block of Snow Hill Road in 2018 in Ooltewah.

After initially deferring the item because of uncertainty about the availability of funds, the Hamilton County Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority's board of directors has approved an approximately $663,000 contract for sewer-line testing.

The funding comes from federal pandemic relief dollars that Mayor Weston Wamp attempted in January to divert to several other projects.

Authority Executive Director Mike Patrick said in a phone call that the agreement with the engineering firm Burns & McDonnell will involve evaluating the conditions of sewer lines in Middle Valley, an unincorporated part of Hamilton County, to identify areas in the greatest need of rehabilitation. The wastewater authority board approved the contract Feb. 22.

The work will include pumping smoke into sewer lines to pinpoint breaks, and crews will also send a small camera through pipes to inspect them for defects. This initial testing will allow the wastewater authority to conduct targeted repairs of sewer lines in the Middle Valley area, Patrick said, and is part of a series of similar projects the authority is performing throughout the county, including in East Ridge, Red Bank and Soddy-Daisy.

"In a perfect world, we replace all the pipes, but we don't have the money to do all that," Patrick said. "We have to pick and choose the areas that need the most attention."

The wastewater authority has set aside $3 million of American Rescue Plan Act funding for the project, Patrick said, the majority of which the organization will spend during construction. However, at the County Commission's morning meeting Jan. 25, Wamp proposed using that $3 million to instead fund nine other initiatives, including the installation of highway markers, road upgrades at Signal Mountain Middle-High School, a program tailored for inner city youth and two organizations that serve the local Hispanic community.

The authority's board of directors had planned on considering the engineering contract for the Middle Valley rehab during an afternoon meeting that same day, but officials ended up pulling the resolution because of the discussions at the commission meeting that morning.

Wamp told commissioners Jan. 25 that the money would support more pressing projects that were overlooked during the original distribution of federal funding. The original intent of those dollars, he added, was to support communities disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

"We've presented a resolution today to reallocate $3 million that would not be spent for years in terms of the stack of WWTA projects," Wamp said. "And importantly, it will not affect the current plans at WWTA to be able to end all of the sewer moratoriums.

"At this moment, there's a better use for this relatively small amount of money within the larger allocation," Wamp continued, "and rather than it sitting on a shelf for years with federal strings attached on a timeline on which it might not be able to be spent ... we can put it to better use."

The American Rescue Plan Act was a stimulus package passed by Democrats in Congress in 2021. It included billions of dollars worth of one-time funding for local governments.

The wastewater authority received $39 million out of the $71.4 million that Hamilton County distributed to various projects and organizations, a distribution that occurred before Wamp and a new crop of commissioners took office Sept. 1. The wastewater authority has garnered an additional $14 million thanks to grant matches acquired with that federal funding.

Wamp's proposal had attached to it a letter Patrick sent to the mayor Jan. 24.

"As a follow-up to our conversation, the funding being reallocated through your resolution is designated for a lesser priority project," Patrick wrote Wamp. "Postponing the project will not affect the removal (of) any existing sewer moratoriums."

Asked if the mayor's assessment of the timeline and the impact of pulling that funding was accurate, Patrick said he would prefer not to comment.

"We are very appreciative of any funding that we get and intend to put it to the best use possible," he said.

Although they expressed support for the mayor's spending priorities, several county commissioners balked in late January at the prospect of funding them with money reserved for the county's sewer infrastructure. Over the past several years, the wastewater authority has been preparing to enter into an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency intended to address excessive sanitary sewer overflows.

There are 420 miles of gravity sewer lines in Hamilton County, Patrick said, and the consent decree will require the authority to evaluate every single one. He predicts the wastewater authority could sign the federal deal sometime in the next six months before it goes to a federal judge for approval.

Projects like the one in Middle Valley are part of a proactive effort to complete sewer rehabilitation before the agreement goes into effect, Patrick said. Those projects also help reduce the amount of extraneous rainwater that flows through the system, cutting down on the approximately $12 million the authority has to pay the city of Chattanooga annually for transportation and treatment costs.

The authority does not receive money from Hamilton County general government. Instead, the authority is self-funded and relies on fees charged to customers, Patrick said, which makes the American Rescue Plan dollars it received last year extremely unique.

"Sewer rarely gets allocations like this, and it's timely, too," Patrick said, because of the federal agreement. "It's kind of nice that we have federal funding coming in to help us comply."

Although it will depend on the results of the survey, it's possible the price tag for the Middle Valley project will be higher than $3 million, and there could be an additional phase of work once more funding becomes available.

"We're very in tune with the deadlines imposed by the ARPA funding," Patrick said, meaning the authority will aim to complete phase one of the Middle Valley project by the December 2026 spending cutoff.

During the commission's meeting Feb. 1, Wamp ended up paring down his original request to fund one item -- $400,000 for lights at East Hamilton High School. Funding for that came from a 2018 bond issue rather than the wastewater authority's pandemic relief dollars. The mayor said he expects his remaining initiatives could find funding over the course of the current budget year and as county officials prepare for fiscal year 2024.

Commissioner Joe Graham, R-Lookout Valley, attended the authority's afternoon meeting Jan. 25 as part of a "fact-finding mission" to see how the board's actions could impact the Middle Valley project.

"In my years of being involved with this organization ... there's never going to be enough money to get the infrastructure needs in place to grow at the rate that we're growing," he told authority board members, according to a recording recently obtained by the Chattanooga Times Free Press. "In my opinion, a $3 million hit might as well be $30 million because you all can't afford that."

He urged the board Jan. 25 to go ahead and spend the money.

"We were told today that you didn't need it," Graham said to members, "that the Middle Valley project could be put off for a long period of time and it wouldn't matter. I don't represent Middle Valley, but I'd hate to think what the Middle Valley residents are thinking out there right now if they have a sewer episode."

Graham added that the mayor's attempt to pull funding from the project placed Patrick in an unfair and impossible position.

WWTA Board Chairman Dick Gee told Graham during the meeting Jan. 25 that the authority would spend the money for the Middle Valley project regardless of whether it came from federal pandemic funds or fees paid by customers.

"What we're suggesting is taking money that's allocated to WWTA customers and transferring it, so we're taking money out of our customers' pockets," Gee said in late January, "because without that, we'll have to charge them to make up the difference, and that's really what I see as the regrettable part of all this."

WWTA board member Doug Fisher said at the Jan. 25 meeting that it's in the best interest of the wastewater authority to avoid a dispute with commissioners and the mayor, adding that it would be preferable for those projects to come from the county's general fund and not the organization's pandemic relief dollars.

"Mike is the WWTA," Fisher said "This board is the WWTA. We were kind of humming along pretty good. We would kind of like to just be left alone and let us fix the sewer problems."

Another authority board member, Peter Phillips, acknowledged in a phone call that it could be a chore to complete the Middle Valley project before 2026. He noted that there are multiple wastewater utilities across the state with American Rescue Plan money that are going be hiring contractors for projects.

"The holdup is going to be getting contractors to do the work," he said, "not the government getting this stuff done. We know where it needs to be spent and are doing it rapidly."

Even so, Phillips said, there's no reason the mayor would need to dip into the authority's American Rescue Plan funding for those projects. Instead, he could tap the county's rainy day fund. Graham noted during the authority's meeting in January that Hamilton County has a fund balance of about $140 million.

In an interview Wednesday, Wamp said he conveyed to commissioners exactly what Patrick conveyed to him and his staff.

"When meeting with him, it was very clear that there was a project that was of lower importance and might not meet the timeline," Wamp said. "There's very little certainty in the construction industry right now about when you can get projects online."

The authority initially expected to receive half of the American Rescue Plan funding that it ended up getting, Wamp stated.

"Now, they'll act like every dollar is existential, but the reality is only very late at the end of (Mayor Jim Coppinger's) tenure did he sort of give them the remainder of the money," he said. "We still believe we're one of the first counties in the entire country to have allocated every dollar of our ARPA money."

Five members of the authority board are mayoral appointees, Wamp said, and although none of the seats are up for another few years, his administration will have an opportunity at some point to appoint its own members to the panel.

"I'm trying to find new blood in all the board appointments that we have an opportunity to make," he said.

Contact David Floyd at dfloyd@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249.

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