Elissa Yount: How much to flush?

by Elissa Yount

My good mama, who grew up in the country before rural electrification, always said the best sound she ever heard was the sound of flushing water.

We all expect our water to flush and for this we pay dearly. Take a look at just some of the money Henderson has borrowed for just our sewer and water needs that we are still paying for:

$2,747,865 — 20 annual installments of $137,393 plus interest for sewer improvements

$2,305,706 – 20 annual installments of $115,285 plus interest for sewer improvements

$1,255,360 – 20 annual installments of $62,227 plus interest for sewer improvements

$841,968 – 20 annual installments of $42,098 plus interest for water lines

$2,957,697 – 10 annual installment of $295,770 plus interest for water lines

Then there is money owed by the Regional Water System of which Henderson is a 60% owner:

$3,800,000 – 20 semi-annual installment of $225,297 including interest for water lines

$5,115,000 – 26 semi-annual installments of $250,550 including interest for water lines

$2,130,000 – 31 semi-annual installments of $93,823 for water lines

In addition to this debt, there was $15,630,000 in Water and Sewer Revenue Bonds Series 2001 issued for water and sewer system improvements. The payment for this on June 30, 2009 was $705,000 in principal and $601,763 in interest for a total payment of $1,306,763. These payments will continue until the year 2021. All of this information can be found in the comprehensive annual financial reports for the City of Henderson.

With all this money borrowed and spent, you would think that our systems would be in good shape. If you do, you’re wrong. Here is just a sampling of the problems found in just one report for Henderson as the city had over 100,000 feet of line cleaned and TV’d: “A 6-inch water line cracked and dumping water into a manhole…an open 4 inch line carried water directly from curb into a manhole…a 6-inch sewer service broken in a driveway pipe allowing all the water from the ditch to enter the sewer line.”

As of July 27, 2009, in the city’s report to the Division of Water Quality (DWQ), it is revealed that $8,244,510.85 of priority one repairs need to be made in Sandy Creek Basin. In addition, a $1,581,000 grant from the Clean Water Management Trust Fund that was to be used to replace our UV disinfection system at the treatment plant was taken back by the governor.

If you add those two figures together, you are very close to $10 million in needs for our city sewer and water. How then can the city even dream about supporting a line to Kittrell? How could the state contemplate loaning us more money to study how to run a line to vacant or uninhabited land? How many pumps would it take to pump the waste back to the Nutbush treatment facility, and how feasible is this? Can you imagine the cost and complications of that? How much sense does this make? Not much, unless, of course, you are an engineer bidding to get to study the plan for $250,000.

Henderson must take care of the problems at hand. We had to assure DWQ that we could handle the waste from the new Clark Street School. Can we assure DWQ and the people of Henderson that we can handle the waste from this line?

First things first.

We now have our lines mapped with pictures of our entire Sandy Creek collection basin. If we only had the money, we could get all the problems fixed. It does not take a rocket scientist or even a city engineer to know that ignoring our problems with sewage is only going to make them worse. Certainly it will not make them go away. Let’s ask for money that will be put to a good purpose. The city government needs to flush the idea of a sewer line to Kittrell until we have a handle on our debt and good sewer service for the customers we already serve.