Sumter city, county councils pass wastewater plan

By GINA VASSELLI
Item Staff Writer
gvasselli@theitem.com

At the most recent Sumter city and county council meetings, both councils gave approval to a resolution dealing with a regional wastewater service agreement.

The agreement is between six local governments: Clarendon and Sumter counties, the cities of Manning and Sumter, and the towns of Summerton and Turbeville.

This most recent version of the agreement mostly refines the previous one, approved back in December 2007, which lays out how the six governments would work together to provide more wastewater disposal capacity.

The revised agreement is now making its way around to the six local governments' councils.

The conversation about wastewater began about 20 years ago when the city of Sumter began considering expanding its wastewater treatment plant but faced the possibility of exceeding its limits for discharging into the Pocotaligo Swamp.

Assistant City Manager Al Harris said the city began looking for another place to discharge the treated wastewater and settled on the Wateree River, more than 20 miles away.

But even after the city got a permit from state Department of Health and Environmental Control to discharge into that river, it continued looking at other places to discharge.

"The idea came up to go with a regional system," Harris said, which would be cheaper and is looked upon more favorably by the controlling agencies, like DHEC.

The city then began exploring options for the Santee River, which Harris said had fewer restrictions on it than the Wateree, but was more than 30 miles away.

"It was going to be a lot more costly," Harris said. But it was a better deal in the long run with "everybody having to pay their fair share."

Since the city began to draw other governments into its plan, the Santee-Lynches Regional Council of Governments, which has board members from Sumter, Lee, Clarendon and Kershaw counties, "provided the table around which those topics could be discussed," said Jim Darby, the regional council's executive director.

For more details, read Tuesday's edition of The Item.