Committee reviews water, sewer service

By ROBERT BAKER
Item Staff Writer
bbaker@theitem.com

MANNING — Clarendon County officials came one step closer to realizing their goal of providing water and sewer service throughout the county as the Clarendon County Administrative Review Committee met Thursday. Composed of county officials and administrators from each municipality, the committee decided to approach plans to service the whole county by looking at what will be supplied at a future date and planning backward.

"From my experience, I think I'd like to go all the way to the end of what we want the project to look like and then come back through time to see what we need to get there," said Summerton Administrator Bruce Behrens, who chairs the committee. "If you go to the year 2030 (for example) and you have a map, that would tell us what areas will be serviced by that date. From there, we can create a master plan as if money and jurisdiction were no problem and that will tell us where we can go next."

Behrens said such an exercise would allow Manning, Summerton and Turbeville to work with the county as a whole to find effective ways to provide water and sewer service to unincorporated areas of the county, something the county was authorized to do through a referendum in 1986 and through a follow-up ordinance in 1991.

Taking a step toward that goal, the county purchased the Wyboo Water and Sewer System, formerly Wyboo Plantation Utilities Inc., in late December for about $900,000. That system serves about 600 and 300 customers with water and sewer, respectively.

"This would be an exercise where we could all sit around the table and see how this might work," Behrens said. "The magic in this approach is that there might be economic stimulus money for exactly these types of projects."

The ARC was formed by a resolution authorized by county council last year to specifically find a way the municipalities could work with the county to provide water to unincorporated areas. The county had previously suggested the Clarendon Joint Water-Sewer Commission, a measure that was rejected nearly outright by Turbeville, Manning and Summerton councils.

Turbeville Administrator Pat Goodwin agreed that his town wants to find a way to serve as many of the county's residents as it can and suggested the county and municipalities join together to conduct a feasibility study of the whole county. One such study was previously undertaken in recent years, although County Development Board Executive Director John Truluck said that study only covered the southern portion of the county, which includes the Wyboo system.

"That study was done at that time through money from Farmer's Telephone (Inc.)," Truluck said. "They defined the area and were not interested in doing anything outside of that. That's why it's just that triangle. They wanted to look at primarily the lakefront."

Manning Administrator Rebecca Rhodes agreed that the entities needed to come up with a plan and suggested each administrator talk to his or her council members this month and reconvene at next month's meeting on May 14 to discuss further plans. She said one action officials could perform in the meantime is to map out areas where existing water services can connect to newer or other existing services.

"We could have (our public works people) map out those areas so that we know what can connect and where," Rhodes said.



Contact Staff Writer Robert Baker at bbaker@theitem.com or (803) 435-8511.