New wastewater projects on tap for city

The Chattanooga City Council gave the green light Tuesday to more than $10 million in wastewater control expenses.

Key items include $8.2 million in sewer line rehabilitation work, $2 million for wastewater management services and $375,000 to redesign drainage and sewer lines near Riverside Drive and Citico Creek.

Councilman Anthony Byrd shared concerns voiced by the Lincoln Park community over the Citico Creek drainage project, which calls for separating combined stormwater and sewage lines and running new pipe under the proposed roadbed for a Central Avenue extension to Riverside Drive.

“I will be watching this project very thoroughly and seeing what’s going on and making sure the community and the park is held to the highest level of respect,” Byrd said.

Tiffany Rankins, secretary of the Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association, said she was disappointed the community had not learned of the stormwater project until now.

The Lincoln Park community has consistently opposed the Central Avenue extension project, citing worries that it will sound the death knell for the historic neighborhood and its park.

“This is the gateway to the beginning toward exterminating the community here, doing away with it,” Rankins said in a meeting last summer.

Public Works Administrator Justin Holland said he would get Rankins up to speed on the drainage project.

The multimillion-dollar sewer line rehabilitation work takes place in the Friars Branch basin and will require repairs or replacements of 22,000 linear feet of pipes, Holland said.

The Public Works interactive wastewater program map shows the basin is located north of East Brainerd and includes the Shallowford Road area and Tyner. It runs north along Interstate 75, past Enterprise South.

The project is part of a $250 million, 17-year program launched four years ago in accordance with a consent decree agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The negotiated settlement calls for Chattanooga to stick to an aggressive timetable to stop sewage overflows into the Tennessee River. An essential part of the program requires the city to repair worn out or damaged wastewater lines, which can fill up with stormwater, which then forces raw sewage to bubble up out of manholes.

Councilman Darrin Ledford questioned the inclusion of a $390,000 contingency amount in the $8.2 million rehabilitation contract.

“While we’re in a project, we run into various things in the field that we oftentimes can’t foresee and things where we have to make changes on the fly,” Holland said. “We ask for that leverage to make some good decisions in the field so that we are successful at completing what we set out to complete, and do that as efficiently as possible.”

The wastewater program management agreement went to Jacobs Engineering, which has supervised Chattanooga’s consent decree work since it started. The firm is scheduled to give an update to the city council on May 16.