Slater sewer will get an overhaul

By Charles Sowell  

JANUARY 9, 2010 6:00 a.m. (0)

The imminent takeover of Slater’s decrepit sewer system by the Metropolitan Sewer Subdistrict will relieve the residents of this old mill village of more than an odiferous problem.

It may well prove to be one of those rare scenarios where governmental action to serve the local public good actually does so and in a fashion that multiplies over time and distance to improve the environment and lives as far away as Greenwood.

It all has to do with a few hundred yards of very leaky terra cotta sewer pipe with a big inflow and infiltration problem in Slater.

Fixing those leaky pipes will help Renewable Water Resources (ReWa formerly Western Carolina Regional Sewer Authority) control problems with storm water inflow and infiltration and thus could help improve water quality as far downstream as Lake Greenwood.

ReWa is the Upstate’s largest sewage treatment operator and serves Slater as well as 400,000 customers in a five county area.

Slater’s leaky system dates from 1928 when mill hands laid the lines around Slater Hall using mules and plows. Not much has changed in the intervening decades, except for occasionally clearing a major blockage in the increasingly unmanageable system, said Dave Parson, chairman of the three-member Slater Water Sewer and Light board.

“I came on the board in March of ’08,” he said, “and spent most of my first year trying to get a handle on billing and issues with leaky pipes.

“Things were bad, so you can imagine my surprise when Ray Orvin of ReWa asked me down to his office in April and told me there was $1.75 million in federal stimulus money available through DHEC to replace our lines.

“It seemed like a godsend.”

But there were, of course, hitches.

Slater, with 190 customers no equipment and no employees other than the three member board and a secretary, was in no position to handle a job of the magnitude needed to handle the inflow and infiltration.

Enter the Metropolitan Sewer Sub-District, Greenville County’s largest provider of sewer service to residential and business customers with more than 600 miles of lines.

“These folks were in the sewer business,” said Parson, “And they had to the wherewithal to handle the kind of revamp our system needed.”

Michael L. Dickson, Metropolitan’s general manager agreed his agency would absorb the customers of Slater Sanitary Sewer Service and oversee laying new pipes to serve the tiny township after a series of public meetings.

In Slater lines are run in a haphazard fashion through yards and occasionally under houses. Using $2.1 million in federal money those lines taken out of service and new ones run under the streets, said Carol L. Elliott, project manager for Metropolitan.

Orvin, working in conjunction with Metropolitan, Sen. Phillip W. Shoopman, state House Speaker Pro Tempore Harry F. Cato and District 17 County Councilman Joe Dill brokered the funding deal.

Shoopman was also instrumental in obtaining a $500,000 grant through the Appalachian Regional Council to help with the project, Parson said.

Greenville County Council approved a resolution allowing Metropolitan to take over sewer service in Slater and the paperwork should be finalized over the next few weeks, Elliott said.

Metropolitan is a tax-based public service district created by the state legislature in the late 1960s to provide sewer service, Elliott said. Slater residents will be subject to a 5.7 mil tax to pay for the service and will have to pay ReWa’s fee for processing the waste based on water usage.

“But the residents will be loosing their maintenance fees, so the net ought to be virtually no difference than what they’re paying now,” Elliott said.