Norris sewer customers may have to pay millions to stop stormwater runoff
Norris may have to spend millions of dollars and potentially could be forced to raise sewer rates drastically to fix problems with stormwater runoff overwhelming the city’s sanitary sewer system during heavy rains.
That was the message the city’s Water Department and Mayor Chris Mitchell gave to the City Council and residents in attendance at Monday night’s council meeting.
The city is under pressure from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s Division of Water Resources to file a plan by May 17 to address the stormwater runoff issue, or end up paying up to $23,460 in fines for violations of state regulations regarding wastewater discharges into rivers and streams.
Norris already has paid $4,692 of that fine to the state, and would be on the hook for the rest of it unless its remediation plan is filed on time and is acceptable to TDEC.
The city has contracted with Cannon and Cannon engineers for $300,000 to study the sanitary sewer system to find out where stormwater is entering the system, which can add a million gallons of water per day to the system and overwhelm the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
Because fixing the problem is expected to be a multi-year, multi-million-dollar process, the city must find ways to raise the money — but under state law, is not allowed to use money collected through property taxes.
Instead, the city must get grants or borrow money to pay for the upgrades, and then pay off the loans using higher sewer rates for customers. About three-fourths of Norris’ water customers — around 600 — also have sewer service, and would have to pay the higher rates, the council was told by the Water Commission.
The city’s wastewater treatment plant near the entrance to the city on East Norris Road is designed to process up to about 200,000 gallons of wastewater per day, and normally gets about 100,000 gallons per day, the council was told.
But when it rains, that can push beyond 1 million gallons, and most of that gets bypassed around the treatment plant and discharged into Buffalo Creek, at a point south of Andersonville Highway, near the Chunky Monkey restaurant and ice-cream stand, Water Commission member Marguerite Wilson told the council.
While that dumped water does get treated with chlorine to get rid of bacteria, the chemical pollutants in it are not removed, she said.
Mayor Chris Mitchell received a “Director’s Order and Assessment” from TDEC’s Division of Water Resources last month detailing the violations, which allegedly occurred from May 1, 2019, through Nov. 30, 2021.
City officials were quick to point out that the problems are with the sewer system, and have nothing to do with the city’s drinking water.
“This is not about your drinking water,” Mitchell said during the council presentation Monday night. “Your drinking water is clean.”
