Supervisor details wastewater treatment plant deficiencies

When the new board of Charles City supervisors took office last year, each member designated areas they would focus on based on experience and strategy for improvement. For District 2 supervisor Bill Coada, he wanted to make sure the public’s inquiries and speculation on condition of the county’s wastewater treatment plants and public works department came to the forefront to see how serious conditions have become.

At Tuesday night’s board meeting, Coada’s hour-long presentation consisted of pictures and documents that compared and contrasted the wastewater plants and organization of a variety of vehicles and buildings in the public works department. Coada also presented documents and e-mails that date back to 2008 that centered on lack of compliance with Virginia Department of Environmental Quality [DEQ] regulations, thus leading to violations.

“This is a severe problem and people speculate the severity,” said Coada. “I am hoping they realize like I did that this problem is worse than I first thought.”

Coada’s pictures presented in front of 50 attendees including electronic equipment at plants not maintained properly, loose wires, decomposition of wells and other facilities, and extensive physical damage to property.

“Most of these problems arose because we have failed to maintain these conditions,” continued Coada. “Now the county is going to have to spend a lot of money to replace and repair these plants.”

Rough figures total nearly $2.8 million in repairs and replacement of several of the wastewater plants. Those figures, as noted by Coada, don’t include engineering costs to actually do the work.

“I know people have been talking about how other projects and other things should come before this replacement and I understand that, but I just wanted to let everybody know that it’s not as simple as it seems,” he concluded.

Coada said that the decision to address these projects is a mutual decision by the supervisors. Among the projects to address this year are maintenance at the wastewater plants in Ruthville, Roxbury Industrial Park, and on Kimages Road.

In other news, members of Charles City’s Library Committee addressed the board to ask for consideration of a referendum on new library funding.

Committee members asked supervisors to approve a referendum to be placed on next November’s ballot for the county to request funds or take out a loan to construct a new building for the library. The committee also requested a referendum to look at alternative methods for requesting funds if the first option is not available.

Committee members have continued to push for county supervisors helping fund the construction of the building and for supervisors to pledge $2.5 million toward building a library in the county.