FUTURE TREATMENT PLANT SITE VOTE WILL TEST COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
Whether they like it or not, the Hamilton County Commission in the next few months will have to step into the eye of the storm about a new sewage treatment plant in the eastern end of the county.
It could be political theater of the most interesting kind.
At issue is county growth, the further development of a 20,000-acre area between Highway 58 and Interstate 75, something commissioners have said they desired. If growth, which produces more tax revenue, which in turn allows the county to do more for its citizens, is to continue, infrastructure to support that growth is needed. Part of that infrastructure is a sewage treatment plant.
The county commission, in a September 2017 vote, chose to — in effect — raise property taxes to pay for schools support, jail relocation and a sewage treatment plant.
Currently, though, the optimum location for a plant has raised more of a stink from three previous community meetings than residents likely are ever to smell from such a plant. Though most understand the need for it, no one wants it in their back yard.
Mark Harrison, executive director of the Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority (WWTA), told Times Free Press editors and reporters Thursday that the 157-acre site in question at 7800 Mahan Gap Road remains the agency’s best option but does not mean it isn’t continuing to explore others.
However, any others, he said, would be more costly for ratepayers, who already will be footing the bill for some $200 million in infrastructure improvements over the next 20 years and $45 million for the proposed plant.
To date, Harrison said, despite several public meetings, residents of the area “aren’t hearing what we’re saying.” He doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand their concerns. He means the factors that make the site optimum are being overshadowed by those concerns. Harrison said he would have some of those concerns himself, but most of them won’t cause the problems residents think they will.
To be clear, he said, “no one’s pocket is being lined, no one’s got any backroom deals.”
When the tax increase passed, Harrison said, the thought at the time — though nothing was written in stone — was that the plant would go on property adjacent to the county landfill. By March or April of this year, his engineer said the landfill would not be the ideal spot. The topography was difficult, and additional pumps would be required to pump sewage over a ridge.
After careful study, the Mahan Gap Road site was felt to be the most ideal among 10 finalists.
Other sites the agency has examined would require more land preparation, the construction of a large storage tank and tree removal. In addition, those sites would affect an endangered bat species or will have archaeological concerns.
If Harrison could sit down with each resident to help alleviate their concerns, he said he would tell them about the importance of growth — that not building the sewage treatment plant would stop or “completely stifle growth”; that sewer infrastructure is needed at the Mahan Gap location for the growth that already has occurred and to ease demands on the Moccasin Bend Treatment Plant in Chattanooga; that the plant will have staff on site 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in case of an emergency, and that it will have power generation backup; that the plant will have state-of-theart monitoring; that residents won’t see the plant and that 99.9 percent of people in the area won’t know it’s there; that it will have a vegetation buffer; that it is above the 100-year floodplain; that “very few people” will ever smell the plant; that the plant will require “very few trucks”; and that property values actually are likely to increase because of the plant’s presence.
The last of those items may surprise residents of the area, but he said that has been the case with the relatively recent completion of a plant in Rutherford County, home of fast growing Murfreesboro.
The WWTA will have an additional community meeting about the site next week. In December, the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency is expected to take up the matter, and, some time in early 2019, the Hamilton County Commission, will debate it.
Most commissioners campaigned on the importance of continued growth for the county. Discussion and subsequent votes on the plant will see if they mean what they said.