AUB: QUESTIONS ABOUT NEW
WASTEWATER PLANT VALID,
ACCOUNTABLE

ATHENS, Tenn. - With recent announcements that Athens Utilities Board (AUB) will move forward with a $16 million expansion of the Oostanaula wastewater treatment plant, some in the community are asking questions about the plans, the reasoning, and the possibility of alternatives.

AUB Communications Director Wayne Scarbrough said AUB welcomes such questions and encourages community members to call AUB to get answers.

“It’s good that people want to know all they can about a project this big and this vital to our community. When a public utility spends this kind of money, the public should be involved,” he said. “If people will call us with questions, we’ll gladly go over all of the issues with them.”

The city of Athens is under a state-mandated moratorium with regard to loading the municipal wastewater system. The moratorium stems from the inability of AUB’s Oostanaula treatment plant-a relic of the 1960s-to effectively treat the entire incoming waste stream, particularly during periods of increased rainfall.

The current plant is rated at 2.8 million gallons of water per day (MGD). The new plant will be rated at six million MDG with the ability to peak at 15 MGD for up to three consecutive days.

A valid question that recently has surfaced, Scarbrough said, is why in 1993 did AUB believe that the Oostanaula plant could not be expanded, opting instead to build the North Mouse Creek plant on Whittaker Road.

“Frankly, that was our understanding in 1993 and until very recently,” Scarbrough said. Until recently, he said, the state of Tennessee maintained that AUB could not sufficiently treat an increased volume of wastewater at the Oostanaula plant based primarily on the presumed slope of Oolstanaula Creek as it meanders through the area.

However, AUB’s Superintendent of Water and Wastewater, Jill Davis, believed that topographic maps referenced by the state did not accurately depict the creek’s character.

“I didn’t believe that the maps of the creek that were used a decade ago showed the true character of the creek, so we went a step further and surveyed the elevations for better accuracy,” Davis, a former state environmental employee, explained. “Right away, it was apparent that the creek’s true character and slope was ample to support a redesigned, larger treatment plant,” she said. “We simply know better now than we did in 1993, based on our reexamination of the creek’s true slope.”

Davis added that Athens still needed the North Mouse Creek plant to properly serve the community and to offer relief from the sewer moratorium. “Even in 1993 the North Mouse Creek plant was a community necessity, not just an alternative. It allowed us to relieve the Oostanaula plant of that side of the city’s waste, which led the state to grant a partial lift of the moratorium,” she said.

Others in the Athens community wonder why in 1993 AUB did not build a pipeline to the Hiwassee River with a treatment plant there instead of building North Mouse Creek. Now, the same question arises as plans for the expanded Oostanaula plant are solidified.

“It’s a worthy question, and the financial facts answer it quickly,” Scarbrough said.

According to AUB, a pipeline to send treated wastewater to the Hiwassee River would cost some $13 million dollars. “And that’s treated wastewater,” Scarbrough emphasized. “That means the Oostanaula plant still would need to be upgraded. The plant is like any large mechanical system or infrastructure; it doesn’t last forever. Oostanaula is old and in need of major work.”

A system to send raw, untreated wastewater to the Hiwassee would be even more, he said, around $20 million. “Then we’d have to site and build a brand new plant to receive and treat the wastewater before returning it to the river clean. That would be $18 million to $20 million dollars in addition to the $20 million pipeline system to get it there. When you look at the full financial reality it’s clear that the $16 million dollars now needed to rebuild the Oostanaula plant would not come close to funding a conveyance system and plant for a Hiwassee alternative,” he said.

AUB is actively seeking grant funding to help pay for the Oostanaula upgrade, Scarbrough said.

“We are talking regularly with Congressman Duncan’s office regarding the need for the plant and the impact that the debt to pay for it will have on our community. We are exploring every avenue of possible grant funding so that the cost of the plant will not be completely borne by the utility and it’s ratepayers,” he said.

AUB says that rate increases will be necessary to pay for the plant upgrade, but the amount of the increases will be directly affected by the amount of grant funding that may be obtained.

“Increasing rates is not something we’re happy about. But the plant must be built and must be paid for. This is what we face as a community,” Scarbrough said. “I and most of my AUB colleagues are AUB rate payers, too, so we understand the impact on personal finances.”

The current path for obtaining the necessary funds is a low-interest loan through the State Revolving Funds program, which directs federal dollars to needs within the state. AUB hopes to receive construction bid packages within six to eight months. Construction of the plant would take an estimated 18 months to two years.

A last looming question that many have is: Will the planned upgrade to the Oostanaula plant guarantee a lifting of the moratorium?

“The state will not guarantee that,” Scarbrough said. “That’s just not the way it works. But they do promise Athens this: If we do not make this upgrade, we have no chance of getting off of the moratorium, period.”