Published: March 13, 2008 03:34 pm         

Letter to the editor (published March 13, 2008)

At the January Glade board meeting General Manager Harvey Hoffman responded to a question about the Community Club sewer contract with the Food City complex and adjoining town houses. He said, "We are selling some of our excess capacity." (Glade Sun, Jan. 31, 2008, page 8)

According to the club sewer formula, our six-year-old water treatment plant is working at 72.75 percent capacity. The plant is permitted to treat 800,000 gallons per day, so 72.75 percent of capacity is 582,000 GPD. The existing plant should last twenty years before further expansion. We are just over a third of the way to 20 years and already we are nearing the 75 percent mark.

A supermarket, a strip mall and dozens of townhomes cut more than a year off the life of the existing facility. In the past 24 months 271 homes have been completed in the Glade with another 162 under construction. (See ACC 12/08 minutes.) About two thirds of them are attached to the sewer system. The Good Samaritan Senior Living Campus adds another 86 units and a 30 bed care facility. Hickory Ridge adds 91 homes. Heatherhurst townhomes add another 22.

According to a 2007 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study, the Glade is expected to grow an annual rate of 4.82 percent between now and 2016. If only two thirds of new construction is on the sewer system the Glade water treatment plant will reach the saturation point in nine years, five years short of the expected life of the plant.

"Excess capacity" would mean a surplus of capacity in 20 years not a short fall.

Offering the club water treatment plant to a commercial developer may have made a much needed supermarket a reality but it comes with a hidden cost. Down the road, and now sooner than later, membership will bear the cost for an expanded treatment plant, not the commercial customer. But first we have to pay off the $5.375 million we still owe on the current plant.

Selling off our sewer capacity creates a premature need for a new sewer plant and mortgages future sewer capacity of the community.

Mark Richie

Fairfield Glade